Bhubaneswar: ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival 2017 to feature Odia writer Jatindra Mohan Nayak.
Professor Nayak will share dias with eminent regional language authors like Gulzar and Javed Akhtar (Urdu); Mrinal Pande, Anu Singh Choudhary, Manav Kaul, Narendra Kohli, and Ytindra Mishra(Hindi); Arunava Sinha and Radha Chakarvarty (Bengali); and Vola(Telugu). Other regional language writers who will also be seen in the festival are SL Bhyrappa and Vivek Shanbhag(Kannada); CP Deval and Hari Ram Meena(Rajathani), Kanak Dixit and Binod Choudhary( Nepali); Naseem Shafaie and Neerja Mattoo(Kashmiri); Kaajal Oza Vaidya(Gujarati) and Dhurbajyoti Bora(Assamese).
The festival, which will be held from January 19-23 at Jaipur, will feature international writers like Alan Hollinghurst and Richard Flanagan; No Violet Bulawayo, the first black African woman to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2013; two-time Academy Award nominee Sir David Hare; internationally acclaimed poet Anne Waldman; 2016 Emerging Voices Award -winner Eka Kurniawan; writer, journalists and broadcaster Simon Winchester and Italian writer and publisher Roberto Calasso.
Professor Nayak, a notable translator in India, has translated several works of Odia literature into English. His book ‘Astride the Wheel’, a translation of Yantrarudha, an Odia novel by Chandra Sekher Rath, into English has brought him the Hutch Crossword Book Award in 2004. for Indian Language Fiction Translation. He got Katha Translation Award for his English rendering of Tarun Kanti Mishra’s short story as ‘The Descent’. Nayak also worked as a co-translator of Fakir Mohan Sentapati’s Odia novel Chha Mana Atha Guntha. The English translation of the book was first published in the USA under the title ‘Six Acres and a Third’. Fakir Mohan’s autobiography, ‘Atma Jibana Charita’ has been translated as ‘Story of My Life’ by Professor Nayak. His other notable translations into English include the translation of Jagannath Prasad Das’s Desha Kala Patra into ‘A Time Elsewhere’.
