KARACHI: The three-day inaugural Adab Festival Pakistan (AFP) begins on Friday (today) here at Governor House. The founders and directors of the event — Ameena Saiyid (OBE) and Asif Farrukhi — are known for blazing a trail for literature festivals in the country by being integral parts of the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF).

The KLF is now in its 10th year, which is an achievement in itself. When its first edition was held, it was a one of its kind spectacle that spawned quite a few similar annual programmes meant to promote books and the culture of book reading in the country. These days we have the Lahore Literary Festival, Faisalabad Literature Festival and Hyderabad Literature Festival etc taking place on a yearly basis, enabling a vast number of people to interact with authors and choose from a variety of books launched or displayed at these events.

Now Ms Saiyid and Mr Farrukhi have laid the foundation for the Adab Festival Pakistan, which, if the crux of their press meets is anything to go by, intends to project the importance of book reading, and at the same time highlight the richness of cultural diversity that Pakistan boasts.

On the first day of the festival, apart from its two founders, Arifa Syeda Zehra, Ishrat Husain and internationally renowned scholar Vali Nasr will deliver keynote speeches. The inaugural day will also have an important session on the anti-encroachment drive in Karachi that is making headlines for quite some time. Nasim Zehra’s book From Kargil to the Coup will be the first book to be launched at the festival.

Vali Nasr will also be in conversation with Salim Raza on the second day (Saturday). Similarly, distinguished writer and columnist Amar Jaleel will share his thoughts on a variety of subjects with writer and poet Noorul Huda Shah in another session. The day will see the launch of an important book, Kulliyat-i-Suroor, too, in which poet Iftikhar Arif and publisher Hoori Noorani will speak about salient features of the book.

Then a mushaira, to be attended by the likes of Iftikhar Arif, Anwar Shaoor, Kishwar Naheed and Sarwer Jawaid, is another attraction on Saturday for aficionados of Urdu poetry. As far as books in English go, launch of H.M. Naqvi’s Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack and Shazaf Fatima Haider’s Firefly in the Dark are two of the eagerly-awaited sessions on Saturday.

On Sunday, the last day of Adab Festival Pakistan, there will be a dramatic presentation on P.G. Wodehouse by Richard Heller.

For lovers of the city by the sea, there’s an interesting session lined up on Sunday in which Ghazi Salahuddin and Sher Shah Syed will be in conversation with Lt-Col Ian Vaughan-Arbuckle, after the latter’s talk on life in ‘Karachi during Ayub Khan’s rule’.

Apart from that, colourful music and dance items, along with comedy skit shows, are on the programme’s list, which promises to entertain and educate book lovers in the course of three days.

Published in Dawn, February 1st, 2019