LAHORE: A new international partnership between Wimbledon BookFest and the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) brought a strand of events celebrating South Asian voices to this year’s festival in the borough of London.

Festival Director Fiona Razvi drew on her own heritage to forge unique links between the BookFest and the LLF.

The LLF strand at Wimbledon BookFest included memoirs, food, history and architecture events. The book festival had a part of a series celebrating South Asian voices curated in partnership with the LLF.

Sunday (Oct 22) was the last day of the book fest that ran since Oct 12 in the performance spaces in central Wimbledon – Wimbledon High School, Wimbledon Library and New Wimbledon Theatre.

Booker Prize shortlisted writer Mohsin Hamid, the author of The Last White Man, joined bookfest from Lahore for a live streamed event discussing his novel.

“It’s about breaking through barriers - who is native, who is foreign, who is black and who is white - to access a common humanity that exists in all of us,” he said as he joined the festival from Lahore. While replying to the questions by journalist and author Saima Mir, Hamid discussed immigrant identity, the inspiration behind The Last White Man and his writing process.

The New Generation Thinker and British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding nominee Nandini Das discussed her ground-breaking history of British colonialism in India.

Author and Middle-Eastern specialist Diana Darke traced the Islamic and Arab roots of Europe’s architectural heritage.

Broadcaster Aasmah Mir and designer Osman Yousefzada came together to discuss the joys and challenges of growing up between British and Pakistani cultures.

Aasmah and Yousefzada had had a wide-ranging conversation with Kavita Puri about their respective memoirs and the challenges of growing up between two cultures, racism and navigating differing cultural expectations.

Chef Ravinder Bhogal on her latest book Comfort & Joy and the recipes inspired by her mixed heritage.

About the partnership Wimbledon BookFest Director Fiona Razvi said: “Working with the Lahore Literary Festival is an exciting new stage in BookFest’s commitment to sharing stories and building connections across borders. The LLF is one of South Asia’s premier cultural events and we are thrilled to be working alongside them to celebrate and amplify the voices of South Asian heritage.”

Razi Ahmed, the founder and CEO of the LLF said: ’We are delighted to be partnering with the Wimbledon Book Festival to connect our two wonderful festivals that aim for more diversity, inclusivity and foregrounding big ideas. This year at the Wimbledon Book Festival, we co-presented sessions that evoked the spirit of Lahore through conversations on race, assimilation, architectural legacies, identity and gender and would be further broadening this rich repertoire annually as we embarked on this exhilarating journey of more Pakistani and South Asian writers speaking in Wimbledon and the South Asian diaspora and British writers showcased in our Spring 2024 programme in Lahore“.

Razi reiterated the commitment to work together with Fiona Razvi and her team during the coming years on a more culturally integrated and interconnected series bringing Asia and Britain closer.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2023