India the guest of honour as Paris Book Festival returns

After being cancelled for two years amid the Covid pandemic, the Paris Book Festival, France's main literary event, is once again being staged in Paris - and is welcomes India as the guest country of honour.

Some 80,000 visitors, 1,000 authors and 350 publishers are expected at the three-day festival, which will run from 22 to 24 April.

It's being held at the Grand Palais Éphémère, a temporary building designed by the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte and located on the Champ-de-Mars, next to the Eiffel Tower.

India, guest of honour

The last time India was invited to the event was in 2007. Then, during a visit to Delhi in 2018 by Emmanuel Macron, the French President and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi initiated a cross-invitation that symbolises the "close ties that France and India maintain in various fields", Jean-Claude Périer, literary advisor for the National Publishing Union (SNE), told RFI.

India was invited as the main guest in March 2020, but the event was cancelled when France imposed its first coronavirus lockdown.

France will be the guest of honour at the New Delhi World Book Fair postponed to May 2022.

"The choice of the programme was made in several stages given the vastness of Indian literature and the number of national languages, there are 22," explains Périer.

In the end, a delegation of 35 Indian writers, a dozen publishers and officials will be present at the festival as part of a programme called "Indian letters".

'Too little known in France'

"We tried to choose 'genres' that you don't expect: youth, thrillers ... on the Indian side, they tried to have writers representative of not all their national languages but of a dozen or so including some rare languages," says Périer.

"We have tried to reflect the richness, the diversity, the extraordinary plurality of Indian literature. They have a variety of talents, of tones, it's an exceptional literature, and to my taste still too little known in France.

"It's really worth taking an interest in it because it has a lot of affinities with France."

Among the writers invited is Vikas Swarup, the author of Slumdog Millionaire, who will talk about the thrillers he writes during a round table organised with writers Ajay Chowdhury and Manu Joseph on Sunday, 24 April.

► The Paris Book Festival will take place from 22 to 24 April 2022 at the Grand Palais Éphémère.