The Irrawaddy Literary Festival - a Miracle in Mandalay

A few weeks ago I had the great fortune to be invited to the Irrawaddy Literary Festival in Mandalay.

copyright: Colin Falconer

Let’s be clear: this is Burma so the Festival is a highly political event. Its patron is Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition, and - until just a few years ago - one of the world’s most famous political prisoners.

Margaret Simons, writing in the Guardian called the festival a kind of miracle - and it is.

The organizers have hardly any sponsorship. They put the entire festival together from London, supported by British embassy staff in Rangoon and a handful of local writers.

They had to pay their own costs for trips back to Burma.

copyright: Colin Falconer

Yet from five thousand miles away they somehow persuaded three writers of international renown to fly halfway across the world to an impoverished country emerging from years of brutal repression and corruption.

They would share the stage with a handful of unknown authors who only a few years before had been in jail. The translations from Burmese to English and English to Burmese was dependent entirely on volunteers, as was the transportation.

Yes. A miracle.

copyright: Colin Falconer

It is all the brain child of Jane Heyn, supported by her husband, former British ambassador Andrew Heyn and close family friends Giles FitzHerbert, (one time British ambassador to Venezuela), and Rupert Arrowsmith, a cultural historian with movie star looks and immense good humour, a man never seen anywhere without his signature white linen jacket - yet he was twice ordained as a Buddhist monk.

It is the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel … with books.

The supporting cast included Ann Enright, a Booker Prize Winner from 2007, (she won the award for her novel, The Gathering). I’ve met winners of big literary awards before, and I was dreading it. They can be unbearable. Ann was elfin, unpredictable, warm and huge fun.

copyright: Colin Falconer

There was Louis de Bernieres, who wrote one of my favourite books, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin as well as a book about my own part of the world, Red Dog.

If the Festival hadn’t been forced to change dates at the last minute they would have had two Booker Prize winners - Ian McEwan had agreed to come as well.

And Australia chipped in too; the University of Melbourne sent some wonderful writers and speakers, as education partners of the Festival.

How did Jane and her team manage this?

It should not have been possible.

It was not so long ago that it was almost impossible to find anything written in English here. This was a country run by generals, a nation of poverty and prisons, roadblocks and repression.

But after Suu Kyi was released in November 2010, the Heyns invited her to the Embassy for tea - as you do - and Jayne took a deep breath and asked her if she thought a literary festival would be a good idea.

Rupert Arrowsmith, Jayne Heyn, Andy Heyn copyright: Colin Falconer

She did; in fact she said she would be the patron.

So the first Irrawaddy Literary Festival was held for the first time in 2013 in Rangoon. Not long before, gatherings of more than two people were illegal.

Ten thousand people attended and crowds mobbed Suu Kyi’s car.

How did they get away with it? Jane thinks it is because no one - not the government, not the writers - really understood what a literary festival was.

After this first enormous success, the Festival has survived two more years on a shoestring budget. It was this year held at the Mandalay Hill Resort Hotel, in betel-nut juice spitting distance of the old palace, where the last King of Burma once lived.

This year the Festival was not as well attended, as Suu Kyi could not attend due to illness. But it retained its unique charm.

One night I spent two hours talking to the Ambassador from Ireland, thinking he was just some bloke who’d dropped in for a beer.

Louis de Bernieres and Andrew Heyn get photo bombed
copyright: Colin Falconer

The Burmese writers themselves are still coming to terms with the new freedoms and what they might mean. Hardly any are internationally known and the attendees included writers who had been jailed for their writing right through the spectrum to those who once wrote propaganda for the government.

So each day of the Festival one faction or another of the Burmese writers threatened to walk out. It is only the patronage of Suu Kyi that keeps the rivalries and bitterness inside the Burmese literary community from tearing the Festival apart.

The result of the elections later this year are uncertain so no one knows if there will be another Festival.

It would be tragic if it were to die.

But they need sponsors and they need a new organizer; Jane cannot run it again from London.

At the closing ceremony Giles Fitzherbert took the microphone and defiantly assured the audience: “There will be a festival next year.”

I really hope so. This was an impossibly wonderful event that just should not have been possible.

In a country that has seen many dark days, this festival is a glimmering light.

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