KARACHI, Feb 11: Challenging him on everything from his alleged pro-military bias to why he thinks a majority of the Punjabis support Lashkar- i-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa, analyst Ayesha Siddiqa subjected British author Anatol Lieven to a grilling at the Karachi Literature Festival on Saturday.
She also claimed while on stage that she had been promised a one-on-one conversation to question him about his controversial book Pakistan: A Hard Country, only to be told upon arrival in Karachi that the panel had been expanded.
Earlier in the day, an audience member demanded to know why British writer Hanif Kureishi had not visited Karachi in years. And the media lined up in droves to interview Indian celebrity Shobhaa De.
These were just a couple of examples of how the KLF is more lively this year for having gone global. If 2011 was the year the festival first made a name for itself, this is the year it became bigger and flashier. Saturday, the first day of the third KLF, brought international literary stars and larger crowds spread out across more space than a year ago.
Addressing the glaring absence of foreign authors in 2011, the line-up added star imports Mr Kureishi, Ms De, Mr Lieven, William Dalrymple, and Mirza Waheed. And while there were plenty of Pakistani literature and nonfiction heavyweights, from Mohammed Hanif and Fahmida Riaz to Ahmed Rashid and Khaled Ahmed, other panels included Arif Hasan on megacities, Asad Sayeed on the economy and Amin Gulgee on art.
Also noticeable was the increased size of the crowds; both the ballroom and the large main garden were packed for events including one-on-one conversations with Mr Kureshi and Mr Dalrymple and conversations on politics, national security and Afghanistan.
“The first year we had 30 authors, in 2011 we had 90 and this year we have 140,” said Ameena Saiyid, managing director of the Oxford University Press, which organises the event.
“The audience is also much bigger and we have more halls, and they’re all running packed.”
Like last year, though, the crowd did not represent the diversity of Karachi. With the Carlton located at one end of the city, and only eight of 27 events on Urdu literature, the demographic was heavily English-speaking and clearly relatively affluent despite the KLF being a free event.
And as the festival grows up, it will have to try harder to retain its social aspect. One of the best features of last year’s event was the intimacy of the lounge area in the centre of the hotel, where people networked or shared cups of coffee with friends from around Pakistan. This year’s bigger KLF seems to have lost some of that soul.
