With more than 150 of the world’s most sought-after authors and literary personalities attending the Emirates LitFest 2024, starting from January 31, 2024, until February 6, 2024, the event will be host to incredible sessions and talks across all genres. This will be the 16th edition of the festival, the biggest celebration of stories in the Arab region and one of the top literary festivals in the world. Here are some of the sessions to look forward to are the Conversations with Aanchal Malhotra as well as Ben Okri along with Discovery Talks by Martin Puchner, Nizar Habash, Deena Mohamed, Grace Nono and Lynn Tan.

CONVERSATIONS:

Aanchal Malhotra: The Book Of Everlasting Things
Praised simply as ‘mesmerizing’ (Publishers Weekly) and ‘monumental’ (NPR), Aanchal Malhotra’s The Book of Everlasting Things traces the romance between a Hindu perfumer and a Muslim calligrapher against the backdrop of the Partition. A tale of forbidden love, arbitrary borders, the collision of faiths and the parting of a nation, this debut novel heralds the arrival of a bold and daring new voice from India and establishes Malhotra as a masterful storyteller. She will be joined by Jyotsna Mohan to discuss her sweeping yet intimate portrayal of love, loss and remembrance, and the incredible power of ordinary people caught within the jaws of catastrophe.
Details: Friday, February 2, InterContinental Dubai Festival City, 5pm-6pm 

An Afternoon With Ben Okri
Described as a ‘rare thing, a literary and social visionary, a writer for whom all three – literature, culture, and vision – are profoundly interwoven’ (Ali Smith), it is no wonder that Booker Prize-winner Ben Okri is to whom people turn for artistic enlightenment in the face of the biggest existential challenge facing humanity: the climate crisis. In Tiger Work, Okri blends fiction, essay and poetry to evoke the magic of nature and the urgency with which we must all act before it’s too late. He takes to the stage to expand on the themes and messages in his poignant, timely collection.
Details: Saturday, February 3, InterContinental Dubai Festival City, 1pm-2pm

DISCOVERY TALKS:

Martin Puchner On Literature For A Changing Planet
Reading and writing in a time of climate catastrophe may feel a bit like fiddling while Rome burns. As literary critic and Harvard philosopher Martin Puchner (Literature for a Changing Planet) argues, however, the power of stories might just be the key in the fight against global warming. For this fascinating Discovery Talk, Puchner ranges across millennia of world literature to draw vital lessons about how we put ourselves on the path to our present moment – and considers what new stories must be told about our relationship with the earth if we are to avoid climate catastrophe.
Details: Saturday, February 3, InterContinental Dubai Festival City, 10:00am-10:45am

Nizar Habash On Teaching Robots Arabic
What happens when the Arabic language meets artificial intelligence? The emergence of sophisticated artificial intelligence platforms such as Chat-GPT promise to revolutionise the world – from helping people with simple everyday queries to major disruptions across multiple industries and their workforces. Presently, these platforms are predominantly English-language models, with other languages – including Arabic – lagging due to the lack of available online data from which artificial intelligence can learn. In this Discovery Talk, computational language expert and professor at NYU Abu Dhabi Nizar Habash explores the opportunities and challenges of building up the capacity of Arabic-language artificial intelligence systems.
Details: Saturday, February 3, InterContinental Dubai Festival City, 11:30am-12:15pm

Deena Mohamed On Loving The Spiderverse
We have invited some of your festival favourites to publicly nerd out over their quirky interests in this series of free-to-attend ‘fun’ lectures. In this Discovery Talk, prize-winning graphic novelist Deena Mohamed (Shubeik Lubeik) shares how ambitious hit animated movie Into the Spiderverse became an unlikely catalyst for introspection about art and storytelling, inspiring her as a viewer in a way that no other media has succeeded in doing. Blown away by the film’s faultless execution of all its moving parts, Mohamed has been stirred to analyse and muse on what made Into the Spiderverse so absorbing.
Details: Saturday, February 3, InterContinental Dubai Festival City, 1:00pm-1:45pm

Grace Nono On Decolonising Voice
We have invited some of your festival favourites to share their unique perspectives on a diverse range of topics in this series of free-to-attend lectures. In this Discovery Talk, Filipino performing artist, ethnomusicologist and grassroots community leader, Grace Nono (Babaylan Sing Back) will draw from decades of scholarship, creative practice and community facilitation to outline some of the issues she grapples with as an advocate and changemaker, including decolonisation and women’s agency. She will also share clips from her forthcoming documentary, Balaan: Sacred Voices, Sacred Lands.
Details: Saturday, February 3, InterContinental Dubai Festival City, 2:30pm-3:15pm

Sue Lynn Tan On Bringing Chinese Mythology To Life
We have invited some of your festival favourites to publicly nerd out over their quirky interests in this series of free-to-attend ‘fun’ lectures. In this Discovery Talk, delve into the tales of Chinese mythology that have influenced author Sue Lynn Tan’s work. The myths of the Moon Goddess and the archer who shot the ten sun, among others, inspired Tan’s Celestial Kingdom duology, offering a thrilling foundation on which to build her stories. Here, she will explore these legends and how she brought the worlds and characters to life in her award-winning novels.
Details: Sunday, February 4, InterContinental Dubai Festival City, 1:30pm-2:15pm