Thursday, 01 July 2021 | PNS | Dehradun
Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan launched the website for VoW 2021 and the archives of the previous editions of the festival digitally on Wednesday in the presence of the board of governors and jury members of Valley of Words. Speaking on the occasion, he said that unlike typical festivals which focus on the popular and the controversial – the selection of the books and the format of discussion at VoW is cerebral and oriented toward recognition and celebration of knowledge as well as the arts in their myriad manifestations.
He complimented VoW for giving a pan India character to the festival. The fifth edition will be held at Panchkula, New Delhi, Vadodara, Hyderabad and Kolkata, besides Dehradun. He also suggested that the military history and strategy sessions in the next editions should focus on the naval and maritime traditions of India and could be held in Bhubaneshwar, for Kalinga was the nerve centre of maritime traditions of India.
The winners in the English Fiction category announced include Analog Versus Virtual by Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Blasphemy by Osman Haneef, In the Land of Lovers by Sukun Singh, Sometimes Ivory, Sometimes Sand by Mahek Janged and The Wall by Gautam Bhatia. The Hindi fiction selections include Mamata Kiran’s Aangan Ka Shajar, Visat Par Jugnu by Vandana Raj, Kulbhushan Ka Nam Darz Ho by Alka Saraogi, Ravi Katha by Mamata Kalia and Sayanai Diwani by Noor Zahir.
In the category of contemporary writings and nonfiction, the honours in Hindi went to Daastan-e- Mughal-e-Azam by Rajkumar Keswani, who succumbed to Covid before the announcement of these awards. The four other books include Vidrohi Sanyasi (on Shankaracharya) by Rajeev Sharma, Noakhali by Sujata, Ram Vilas Paswan by Pradeep Srivastava and Door Durgam Durust by Umesh Pant. Books selected in various other categories were also announced on the occasion.
