Literature trumps terrorism in Pakistan: Lahore Literary Festival, 2014

Aanya Niaz in the Huffington Post

Emerging from the lap of it’s thousand year glory, the city of Lahore has given its people something other than terrorism and inflation to think about: literature and the arts. Discourse has offered a soothing umbrella. Approximately 4,500 of the young, the talented, the curious and even the silent ones emerged on what was a a most auspicious and successful three-day literary festival, attended by the more than 100 speakers, including the likes of delightful Mira Nair, director of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Ahmed Rashid, renowned author of Descent into Chaos, Maliha Lodhi, celebrated former ambassador to the United States, Nahid Siddiqi, cultivated dance artisan, Kamila Shamsie, authoring melancholy of the East, Ayesha Jalal, the intriguing historian, Moeed Yusuf, leading the South Asia department at the United States Institution of Peace and many, many more.