Karachi:February 11:The third Karachi Literature Festival was off to an auspicious start with a dinner hosted jointly by the Oxford University Press (Pakistan) and the British Council on the lawns of a posh hotel by the seaside on Friday evening. The event was host to the literati of the city.

The festival is hosting 150 authors from all over the world and Pakistan this year, far exceeding those in the first two festivals (2010 and 2011). David Martin, Director of the British Council, paid special tribute to the two organizers, Ameena Saiyid and Dr Asif Aslam Farrukhi. He said that the success of the earlier festivals was owed entirely to Ms Saiyid and Dr Farrukhi.

He said that Pakistani authors had played a highly constructive role in projecting Pakistan overseas and had gone a long way to considerably erase the not-too-flattering image of the country that had been precipitated by various international political happenings.

This being the bicentennial year of Charles Dickens’ birth, he said that there would be special programmes encompassing Dickens’ mighty contribution to English literature.

Ameena Saiyid, Managing Director OUP, thanked the British Council for their unfailing cooperation in the holding of the festivals.

She said that the festival celebrated authors in English, Urdu and Sindhi from Pakistan and overseas and said that while the attendance at the 2010 festival had been 5,000, it had doubled to 20,000 in 2011.

She suggested that payment of royalty to authors should be considerably increased for it to be an incentive for them and made a strong plea for coming down hard on book piracy as she said it was polluting the intellectual environment.

She looked forward to the time when we’d have literary tourism and cited the example of England where she said last year literary tourism had yielded 2 million pounds in Kent county alone.

Dr Asif Aslam Farrukhi, said, “Book lovers never had it better”, referring to the literature festivals in the city.

At the same time, he called for according due importance to Urdu and for that, he said, “We must read our literature and our history extensively”.

She said that the government must institute awards for independent writers because they had an indispensable role in pinpointing the decaying aspects of society and in suggesting remedies.

Martin Fryer, Director Programmes of British Council, talked about the photo and writing competitions pertaining to Dickens’ works.

Cameron Munter, US Ambassador to Pakistan, praised the efforts of the organisers of the festival and said there would be fruitful partnership in the arts and culture between the US and Pakistan.

Others who spoke and lauded the festival(s) were Marcus Lutz, Director Goethe-Instut, Karachi; Tilo Klinner, German Consul-General in Karachi; Gilles Angelf, representative of the Embassy of France; and David Baillon, Director Alliance Francais, Karachi.

Klinner said that the Karachi Literature Festival had won appreciation and critical acclaim for Pakistan the world over. He said that Karachi, once known as the city of lights, had unfortunately changed over the last decade owing to the foisting of regimented thinking and obscurantism but was very optimistic and said that events like the Karachi Literature Festival would go a long way in eradicating that retrogressive state of affairs.

Susan Nicklin, Director, Literature, British Council, London, announced the names of the prize winners for photography and creative writing. The prize for photography went to Awais Ali Sheikh form Lahore and for creative writing to Saeeda Hiba Ahmed.The news.