Redmond O’Hanlon and Maya Jasanoff | Congo Journey | Jaipur Literature Festival

Congo Journey: Redmond O’Hanlon and Maya Jasanoff Redmond O’Hanlon is known for his journeys into some of the most remote jungles of the world, in Borneo, the Amazon basin and Congo. He has also written a harrowing account of a trip to the North Atlantic on a trawler. Between September 2009 and May 2010, O’Hanlon was a guest and co-presenter on the programme Beagle: In Darwin’s Wake where re-traced the route that Charles Darwin took aboard HMS Beagle (1831–36), a journey that played a seminal role in his thinking on evolution. He also presented O’Hanlon’s Heroes, in which he introduces the viewer to his heroes of the 19th century. The programme was awarded with the prestigious Dutch television award, De Zilveren Nipkowschijf. He is the author of the books Joseph Conrad and Charles Darwin: The Influence of Scientific Thought on Conrad’s Fiction, Into the Heart of Borneo, In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon, Congo Journey, Trawler, with Rudy Rotthier, God andDarwin en natuur (The Fetish Room). Maya Jasanoff is a professor of history at Harvard and author of the multiple-award-winning books Edge of Empire and Liberty’s Exiles.Her new book The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World has been hailed as “one of the most important books on colonialism to be written in our time.” She was awarded the 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize for her nonfiction writing. Congo Journey: Redmond O'Hanlon has journeyed among headhunters in deepest Borneo with the poet James Fenton and amid the most reticent , imperilled and violent tribe in the Amazon Basin with a nightclub manager . This, how ever, is his boldest journey yet. Accompanied by Lary Shaffer , an American friend and animal behaviourist , a man of imperfect health and brave decency , he enters the unmapped swamp-forests of the People 's Republic of the Congo in search of a dinosaur rumoured to have survived in a remote prehistoric lake. The flora and fauna of the Congo are unrivalled and with matchless passion, O'Hanlon discovers scores of rare and fascinating anim als: eagles and parrots , gorillas and chim panzees, swamp antelope and forest elephants . But as he was repeatedly warned , the night belongs to Africa and threats both natural (cob ras, crocodiles , lethal insects) and supernatural (from all­ powerful sorcerers to Sam ale , a beast whose three­ clawed hands rip you across the back) make this a saga of much fear and trem bling . Omnipresent too are ecological depredations , political and tribal brutality, terrible illness and unnecessary suffering among the forest pygmies and an appalling waste of human life throughout this little-explored region . THE JAIPUR LITERATURE FESTIVAL Described as the 'greatest literary show on Earth', the Jaipur Literature Festival is a sumptuous feast of ideas. The past decade has seen it transform into a global literary phenomenon having hosted nearly 2000 speakers and welcoming over a million book lovers from across India and the globe. Our core values remain unchanged: to serve as a democratic, non-aligned platform offering free and fair access. Festival Co Directors Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple, alongside Producer Sanjoy K Roy and Teamwork Arts, create a platform for an array of speakers to debate, discuss and present their ideas in the annual five-day programme set against the backdrop of Rajasthan's stunning cultural heritage and the Diggi Palace in the state capital Jaipur. Past speakers have ranged from Nobel Laureates His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, J.M. Coetzee, Muhammad Yunus and Orhan Pamuk, Man Booker Prize winners Ben Okri, Howard Jacobson, Margaret Atwood, Marlon James, Michael Ondaatje, Paul Beatty and Yan Martel, Pulitzer Prize winners Andrew Sean Greer, Benjamin Moser, Colson Whitehead and Jhumpa Lahiri, Sahitya Akademi winners Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, M.T. Vasudevan Nair as well as the late Girish Karnad, Mahasweta Devi and U.R. Ananthamurthy along with literary luminaries including Amish Tripathi, Chima¬manda Ngozi Adichie, Vikram Chandra and Vikram Seth. An annual event that goes beyond literature, the Festival has also hosted Amartya Sen, Amitabh Bachchan, the late A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Fry, Thomas Piketty and former president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. The Jaipur Literature Festival is a flagship event of Teamwork Arts, which produces over 33 highly acclaimed performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals across more than 40 cities globally. Link to our website: https://www.jaipurliteraturefestival.org Link to Jaipur Literature Festival 2018 sessions: https://bit.ly/3bZZgaD Social media links: Facebook:   / jaipurlitfes.  . Twitter:   / jaipurlitfest   Instagram:   / jaipurlitfest