See you in Galle at the FGLF 2019!
The Fairway Galle Literary Festival will begin on Wednesday- January 16. In nine editions the festival has grown a distinct international identity. The old romantic Dutch fort in the South, lapped by an azure ocean, full of nostalgia, history and a maritime mix of cultures, is the ideal setting for a more intimate exploration of the written word, and, of late, also the larger universe of the arts and story-telling.
This year FGLF promises to be more alluring than ever. Apart from the big names that generate waves of excitement- Sir David Hare, Sir Don McCullin and of course Anthony Horowitz- the programme is packed with delicious rencontres and discoveries- and intriguing details- from a workshop in song writing by Justin Whyte to a virtual reality adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, where the visitors, trapped in the body of a “monstrous verminous bug”, like in the novella, have to find the key to the room in which they are trapped before the people outside open the door and discover you in a giant carapace. Among other minutiae, the festival will bring to surface a forgotten Ceylon travelogue, Le Poisson Scorpion, by the Swiss master of that genre Nicolas Bouvier.
But at the heart are the invigorating dialogues: Romesh Gunesekera and Vahni Capildeo on Expatriation, Suzy Hansen on her book that held a mirror up to Americans (startling them quite a bit), and Anthony Horowitz and Charles Cumming on their navigation of the complicated space between fiction and reality in modern espionage writing. Other writers to listen to include Mohammed Hanif, Simon Williams, Lucy Fleming, Anne Enright and Kamila Shamsie- just a few in an enticing array of names.
The lunches, dinners and the ‘private affairs’ offer delightful chances to talk over gourmet dishes in rather personal settings- some of them in pillared verandah houses where generations of Fort families have lived. And then there are the workshops- in poetry writing for adults and teenagers, portrait painting and interview technique and so on while the Masterclasses will add culinary relish.
Also, don’t forget to explore the musical, architectural, historical and artistic strands of the festival, which return this year with more verve.
A full programme and tickets are available online, by logging on to galleliteraryfestival.com. A help-desk has been set up at Barefoot Colombo 3 for those who need assistance with purchasing tickets online. The tickets purchased online can be collected at Barefoot Colombo. The box office at the festival within Galle Fort will be open from January 16 onwards.
Jill Macdonald, curator, has this to share: “In a recent interview Madeleine Thien described the architecture of Bach’s Goldberg variations in this way: ‘It’s almost as if Bach is telling us that the beginning and the end, birth and death, return us to the same place, but in between are these phenomenal variations: joy and sorrow and states of being for which we have no names’.
“The Fairway Galle Literary Festival has on nine previous occasions allowed participants and audiences to return to the places from whence they came, enriched by the experience of listening to writers and musicians who have helped us to identify and inch ever closer to identifying those experiences for which we may as yet have no names.
“With sessions and performances involving writing, music, history, drama, travel and painting, FGLF 2019 has something for everyone and is a celebration of creativity in a setting showcasing Sri Lanka’s long, rich and vibrant history.
“See you in Galle!”