I believe there's a great literary movement waiting to happen in India," says Namita Gokhale, writer and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, who was in town recently. The author of novels such as A Himalayan Love Story, Gods, Graves and Grandmother and The Book of Shiva, Gokhale says the Jaipur Literature Festival is a platform where the greatest names in world literature come together with the best in Indian writing.

"I think literature can never be parochial. That's why this festival is such a celebration of national and international writers and encompasses a range of activities. From films, music and theatre, to book readings, literary lunches, and debates – the Diggi Palace in Jaipur will host all these and more interactions from January 21 to 25, 2009," she adds.

Entering its fourth year in 2009, the literature festival will host some of the best-known national and international writers, including Vikram Seth, Pico Iyer, Michael Ondaatje, Patrick French, Pankaj Mishra, Chetan Bhagat, Tarun Tejpal, Shashi Tharoor, Hari Kunzru and Prasoon Joshi.

"Dilip Chitre, author of Anubhavamrut and Ekun Kavita will be present at the festival. Also, there will be authors who have written extensively in regional languages – like S R Faruqui (Urdu) and Ashok Vajpayee (Hindi), in addition to Wendy Doniger and Sheldon Pollock, both Americans who've authored stellar works in Sanskrit," informs Gokhale.

Herself an accomplished novelist, Gokhale has written five novels and two works of non-fiction. She debuted with Paro: Dreams of Passion, a satire upon the Mumbai and Delhi elite, which was critically-acclaimed and caused an uproar owing to its mischievous sexual humour. Her most recent work was Shakuntala: The Play of Memory; her retelling of the Mahabharata for young readers will be out in 2009.

Elaborating on her association with the Jaipur Literature Festival, the veteran journalist says it was a natural progression of her involvement with the Neemrana Festival (2002) and the Africa-Asia Literary Conference (2006). "Faith Singh, of the Jaipur Virasat Foundation, was instrumental in bringing me and William Dalrymple together. She felt that while I was clued in on all the bhasha writers in India, William was totally in sync with all that's happening on the international scene," explains Gokhale, who was diagnosed with cancer when she was just 35 years old, lost her husband in an accident and brought up two daughters on her own.