Contemporary Voices from India: Novel Reading & Conversation Saskya Jain and Geetanjali Shree (LitFest 2025)

Two acclaimed Indian novelists, Saskya Jain and Geetanjali Shree, will read from their work and engage in a conversation about writing, memory, and the many Indias their fiction brings to life.

Saskya Jain’s Geeta Rahman at Championship Point (2021) tells the story of a young badminton prodigy in 1990s Delhi, coming of age in a rapidly liberalizing nation while grappling with personal grief and the echoes of Partition. With sharp and inventive prose, Jain explores the intimate entanglements of ambition, family, and history.

Geetanjali Shree, winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize for Tomb of Sand and currently fellow of the DAAD Berlin Artists Program, offers in this novel a bold, poetic narrative centered on an 80-year-old widow who rediscovers vitality after loss, befriends a transgender woman, and journeys across the border to confront the wounds of Partition.

Across generations and languages, Jain and Shree present two visions of contemporary India: one in English, the other in Hindi, one seen through the eyes of youth, the other through the wisdom of age.

Language: English, Hindi

Part of LitFest 2025 at Bard College Berlin

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For more information, e-mail [email protected].

Time: 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: Julie Johnson Kidd Hall (Waldstraße 15, 13156 Berlin)

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