Dubai: Jane Goodall, world’s foremost authority on chimpanzees, and Chinese author Mia Jia, have both been confirmed for the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, from February 4-9.
Speaking at a special pre-festival event at the Cultural and Scientific Association Centre in Al Mamzar on February 1, Goodall will share her life’s work studying the apes of Gombe, and her educational project in the UAE: Roots and Shoots.
Goodall’s talk will cover her extraordinary scientific breakthroughs in animal behaviour and her journey to becoming one of the world’s most prominent and active conservationists, as well as her ongoing efforts to inspire every individual to protect the environment we share. She is back by popular demand, as her last event with Emirates Literature Foundation in early 2019 sold out within hours.
Mai Jia, who is one of the most successful writers in China with five bestselling spy and thriller novels that have sold over five million copies in 33 languages with both TV and film adaptations, will also attend.
His debut novel Decoded was acclaimed for its originality and complexity. The Message, a novel about five codebreakers locked in a secret room until a traitor is revealed, will be published in English in 2020. He will be discussing his extraordinary award-winning career, from achieving consistent bestseller status and receiving the prestigious Mao Dun award to inventing a new type of chess while researching mathematics for Decoded.
These two international icons join the already dazzling line up for the 12th edition of the festival, which includes the world’s greatest explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes; bestselling memoir and fiction author Mitch Albom; TV presenter and best-selling author Nadiya Hussain; the first Arab winner of the International Man Booker Prize Jokha Alharthi; celebrity branding expert Jeetendr Sehdev; space scientist Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, and UAE astronaut Hazzaa Al Mansouri. The Festival will welcome more than 150 writers in total to the InterContinental Festival City in February.
To buy tickets and for the full list of authors, visit http://www.emirateslitfest.com/shop
