KARACHI  -  The eighth ‘Adab Festival’ will be held here on Sunday (November 1) at Habitt. This was announced by founder and director of the Adab Festival and Managing Director (MD) of Lightstone, Ameena Saiyid. Ameena Saiyid said, “One festival will be held here at Habitt, Tipu Duktan Road, from 11 am to 10 pm. This festival is being held in Karachi annually.” She acknowledged Adab Festival’s partners, Sindh Government, Goethe Institute, Vgoteo, Institute of Business Management, Habib Metropolitan Bank, the British Council, Magnus Investments, and Habitt Karachi, for their tremendous support for organizing the event. “Adab Festival is a new Silk Route through which our traditions and culture, literature, the arts, and their luscious fruits can travel and enter people’s hearts in every part of Pakistan and the world,” Saiyid said. “Festival is free and open to all; the organizers and partners want everyone in the community to love, experience, and enjoy books and literature,” he added. Adab Festival belongs to the community. Its program is carefully crafted to spark critical thinking, subvert dominant discourses, nurture alternative viewpoints, and provide fertile ground for creative exchange, intellectual exploration, and visionary thinking. The Adab Festival will open at 11 a.m. with a play by Khaled Anam and his Grips Theatre group for ages 8 to 80. It will close with a show by Anwar Maqsood. Speakers at Adab Festival include Imrana Maqsood, Miftah Ismail, Yasser Latif Hamdani, Dr Ali Usman Qasmi, Omayr Aziz Saiyid, Dr Abed Chowdhry, Syed Naved Husain, Faisal Jahangir Malik, Omar Shahid Hamid, Safinah Danish Elahi, Taha Kehar, Syeda Maham Zahra, Maria Memon, Nasrin Iqbal, Anjum Halai, Muhammad Ali Shaikh, Hassan Khan, Shoaib Arshad, Noorul Huda Shah, Saif Samejo, Dr Sahar Gul, Mahtab Rashdi, Salman Faruqui, Jawad Khan, Rabia Nasir, Awab Imam, Umer Khan, Dr Tasnim Ahsan, Dr Huma Baqai.

The annual Adab Festival/Infaq Foundation Awards will be announced and given for the best writings in Urdu, English, and, for the first time, Sindhi. Ground-breaking books include The Election and Omar Shahid Hamid’s latest book, Jinnah. A Life by Yasser Latif Hamdani, Dear Mr. Jinnah. 70 years in the life of a Pakistani civil servant by Salman Faruqui, and Heart Tantrums. A Memoir of Marriage and Misogyny by Aisha Sarwari will be discussed.