Diverse Hay Festival line-up promises 11 days of illumination
International theme features prominently in programme for annual literature festival
Mark Brown, arts correspondent,  guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 April 2010

The Nobel prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer is among the varied-line up at this summer's Hay Festival. Photograph: Guillermo Arias/AP

Bill Clinton called it the "Woodstock of the mind" while Joseph Heller said it was like a cross between "an international conference and a country wedding". This year's Guardian Hay Festival promises to be no different with a diverse line-up that includes Pervez Musharraf, Martin Amis, Zadie Smith and Nadine Gordimer.
More than 100,000 visitors are expected at Hay-on-Wye this summer, where some of the biggest themes are explored over 11 days by some of the biggest names.

Announcing the programme today, the festival's founder and director Peter Florence said Hay was the place to be "if you're interested in the world and people, in love and death, in what is the best thing to do and how to be happy".
There will be a strong international theme to this year's festival, he said, with visits by Musharraf, the former president of Pakistan, and the Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor.

One highlight will be a discussion between the president of the Maldives, Mohammed Nasheed, and the current climate change secretary, Ed Miliband. Nasheed, who will, appropriately, be beamed in by satellite rather than flying to the UK, will talk about the environmental disaster facing his disappearing country and efforts to relocate the population.

The international flavour will continue with the long list of fiction writers attending. Florence said: "We need to be more like the premiership and realise that the best fiction writers are not always from the English-speaking world."

For that reason there will be six new voices from Arab literature – Joumana Haddad, Adania Shibli, Youssef Rakha, Abdellah Taia, Faiza Guene and Randa Jarrar – and an appearance by one of the world's literary titans, the South African Nobel winner Nadine Gordimer, returning to Hay after a 20 year absence. Florence said the 86-year-old writer was "hitting an extraordinary golden patch … She is one of the most articulate commentators that there is and her views on Mugabe and Zimbabwe are absolutely compelling."
Full report and link to Hay Festival site at The Guardian.