Special fest from October 26 to celebrate Penguin's 30th anniversary

NEW DELHI: Penguin Random House India will host a special literary and cultural festival here later this month to celebrate its 30th anniversary and the event has an interesting line-up of the likes of Arundhati Roy, Perumal Murugan, Ruskin Bond and Shashi Tharoor.

The calendar has an eclectic and vibrant mix of authors and books for everyone, says Hemali Sodhi, senior vice president (marketing) and publisher - children's at Penguin Random House India.

Penguin Fever 2017 is a special edition of the annual Spring Fever organised by the publisher from October 26-31.

The library of books will be open from 11 am, followed by evening sessions every day.

The opening day will feature Roy, whose "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" made it to this year's Booker Prize longlist.

Murugan, Kannan Sundaram, Bibek Debroy and Shamsur Rahman Faruqi will participate in a session titled "The Line of Beauty", to be moderated by Namita Gokhale.

Bond will talk about his life, writing and his love of lemon cheesecake in a conversation with Sanjoy Roy.

An interesting session called "Zara sa jhoom loon main"

will see Shobhaa De' in conversation with Vidya Balan and talk on turning 70.

Tharoor will attend a session "The Rise of the Elephant"

along with Gurcharan Das and Sonu Bhasin.

The other sessions include one on environment featuring Sunita Narain, one having Ravinder Singh, Durjoy Datta and Sudeep Nagarkar and another on criminal minds with Hussain Zaidi, Brijesh Singh, Ravi Subramanian and Novoneel Chakraborty in conversation.

The six-day event will be hosted at the India Habitat Centre.

"Spring Fever, titled Penguin Fever this year, is a festival very close to our hearts, and one reader and authors alike look forward to with great anticipation.

This year we've timed it to coincide with our 30th anniversary week in October," says Sodhi.