Lahore Literary Festival cancels Day One of programme, relocates festival to Avari Hotel

The Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) which was scheduled to begin on Friday will now commence on Saturday, February 20 and conclude on Sunday, February 21.

What was to be a three-day programme will now be condensed into two days.

"The change has been on the advice of the Punjab government," said an announcement on the LLF Facebook page.

The festival, which was originally being held at the Al Hamra, has now shifted to Avari Hotel, it was announced on Twitter:

The original programme featured a keynote address by veteran Bollywood actress Sharmila Tagore in conversation with Hameed Haroon. It was to be followed by a session, titled ‘The World of Intizar Hussain’, dedicated to the memory of the literary great who recently passed away.

Simultaneously, a discussion on ‘Multiculturalism in Flux: Refugees, Radicalism and Rightwing Parties’ with a mix of local and foreign delegates was to be held.

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Other concurrent sessions included ‘Voices and Verse of Central Asia’, one with Chinese calligrapher Haji Noor Deen talking about his fusion of style and demonstrating Arabic calligraphy, and ‘State and the Sufis’ with Farzana Shaikh and Hasan Karrar.

In the second hour, sessions titled ‘Writing of Exile and the Exile of Writing’, ‘Preserving National Heritage in Stressed Societies’, ‘Anwar Jalal Shemza: Between Home and Diaspora’, ‘Zubaan aur Shanakht’ (language and identity), and ‘Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Fun aur Shakhsiyat’ were scheduled to be held.

Also on Day One's agenda were sessions like ‘From Quest and Astonishment to Nothingness: How the Painters saw the Sufis’, ‘Creativity, Capital and Chaos: Future of the Metropolis’, ‘Old Urdu Journals: A Disappearing Heritage’, ‘Emerging Trends in Urdu Fiction’, ‘Poetry in Translation’ and a dramatic presentation of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters directed by Hameed Haroon and starring Imran Aslam and Rehana Saigol.