India, March 7 -- At the ninth edition of the Kerala Literature Festival in Kozhikode, India's first Unesco City of Literature, there was much excitement around the presence of astronaut Sunita Williams. She didn't have a book out but highlighted something that remains a concern of all of literature: What do we mean by home, and what does it mean to belong? "From up above, the view makes you question what people are fighting for," she said at a press conference. Large billboards on the road running along the festival's beach venue did scream out other names: Nobel laureates, Booker winners, and bestselling authors. What stood out was the level of engagement and critical thinking. Visitors to this event never shy away from asking the difficult questions. Whether openly identifying as queer while asking questions to Suvir Saran, who was in conversation with Sharmila Sen about his book Tell My Mother I Like Boys, or checking with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, about "safe harbours" and the authenticity of the information on the portal, readers in Kozhikode continue to steal the limelight from panellists. This year's guest nation was Germany, and select conversations were staged to emphasise the country's interest in revisiting its past and signal its openness to literary collaborations. Alongside, The Queer Muslim Project's Language Is a Queer Thing - Poetry Showcase, highlighted queer voices with Sara Haque, Megha Harish and Gayathiri Kamalakanthan reading out their verse. There were workshops on artificial intelligence and lithography, and a parallel Children's Kerala Literature Festival too. The interactions were an interesting mix. During a packed session titled The Art of Making Readers Feel, which had Durjoy Dutta in conversation with Karthik Venkatesh, the popular author was surprisingly open about his vulnerabilities. He spoke about once believing that regurgitating the same stories would keep his fanbase intact, only to realise he had blundered. Wryly, he stated that, at this point, publishers would perhaps have accepted a book of blank pages with his name on it as sales were guaranteed. Translations may not fly off the shelves like a Durjoy Dutta novel does but perhaps they are getting there. Certainly, they often engage deeply with grassroots issues, as is the case with Pratibha Ray's novel Uttarmarga (1988), on the role of peasants and Adivasis in the freedom struggle. At KLF with Kanak Hota, who translated the novel from the original Odia as Uttarmarga: Where Freedom Reigns, she pointed out that the rural population's contribution to the national movement is now rarely mentioned. "For a writer to highlight such issues, they must bleed in the soil that they want to write about," Ray, a Jnanpith awardee, said, adding that besides translating from Indian languages to English, there was a great need for more translations between Indian languages. Crowds also thronged sessions in Malayalam featuring writers such as M Mukundan, Benyamin, VJ James and KR Meera, all of whose work has reached a wider audience through translations. The Zoom session with Salman Rushdie, which saw the winner of the Booker of Bookers in conversation with publisher Manasi Subramaniam, was expectedly interesting. "People search for the autobiography in an author's work. The idea that a work of fiction isn't a disguised work of the author's life is lost on people," Rushdie said, adding that writing is difficult enough without having to wonder about the media reception. Nobel Prize winner Abdul Razak Gurnah was present and, with the Booker Prize-winning Kiran Desai, was part of a session titled Exiles & Echoes moderated by Anindita Ghose, editor of The Only City, an anthology of stories set in Mumbai. "One writes out of homesickness," Gurnah said, while Desai stated that "a novel works like a museum" of sorts. There were some comic moments too. Irked by the meandering nature of a question from an audience member, the Nobel laureate asked the person to deliver a seminar on postcoloniality. Other interesting sessions included the one titled Ghatam: Song of the Clay Pot, featuring the author Sumana Chandrashekar and her publisher at Speaking Tiger, Renuka Chatterjee, and the discussion on Sarnath Banerjee's Absolute Jafar. Are We the Last Human Generation? had Amrita Mahale, author of Real Life, and Austrian author Anna-Elisabeth Mayer in conversation with moderator Shameer Babu on the anxiety around AI. In sum, as always, KLF hosted plenty of thought-provoking sessions with genuine literary stars. And the one person present who had spent time among actual heavenly bodies gave the event a sprinkling of unbeatable stardust....