Cocktails on the Edge of Dystopia

Echoes of the ongoing conflicts and travesties found a way through to some sessions at the Jaipur Literature Festival, but these were few and far between, and seemed muffled

- Iqbal Abhimanyu

“THE world is ending right now…” warned Paul Lynch, celebrated Irish novelist and winner of the 2023 Booker Prize for his dystopian novel Prophet Song, on the opening day of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2024. This was a theme running through India’s premier literary fete this year, as American author Kai Bird gave interview after interview, explaining the life and misery of J Robert Oppenheimer, the US scientist behind the atomic bomb whose biography has witnessed a surge of interest following the blockbuster success of last year’s Christopher Nolan film based on it.

Bird said that the “Faustian bargain” that the ‘father of the nuclear bomb’ had made by helping develop the most devastating weapon humanity has ever known haunted him throughout his life and attempts at atonement eventually resulted in him becoming a pariah for the US establishment.

“We live in divisive times and a turbulent world, with several wars going on, and part of the reason why the film and the book have suddenly become popular is because it is a timely reflection of our current world,” Bird told Outlook in a chat.

And yet, the opulent celebration of Indian and world literature and art managed to merely skirt around the imminent doomsday scenarios, firmly rooted in its quasi-medieval royal fervour and repetitive celebrations of a syncretic past that has begun to appear almost mythological or made-up now as we are surrounded by growing religious assertion in all spheres of public and political life.