Who’s afraid of Ayn Rand?
 
In this the novelist-philosopher’s centenary year, Sheila Kumar looks at life after the Howard Roark effect. Read more

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

Ayn Rand

Liberty Institute marked the centenary at its stall at the Calcutta Book Fair, January 26 to February 6, 2005, where there was a special display of all the works of Ayn Rand. Also exhibited were about a dozen other books on Rand and her philosophy by international scholars. The display attracted the attention of the discerning readers many of whom had not seen the whole collection at one place. On February 2, Rand’s birthday, there was a small party at the stall to mark the occasion.

Liberty Institute plans a series of events to celebrate the centenary throughout the year. The Fountainhead essay competition for high school students will be entering the seventh year in India, and is proposed to be greatly expanded to reach out more schools than ever before. A second essay contest for college and university students based on Atlas Shrugged is in the offing. A third competition to be launched is for the creative people to write a note with supporting sketches for the Howard Roark Prize for the spirit of man. The final contest that is being conceptualised is a performing arts competition based on Rand’s plays or sections of her novels.

Please stay tuned as we unfold the events commemorating the centenary of one of the most remarkable and influential authors of the 20th Century.

The aim of these events is to expose more people to the ideas of Ayn Rand, and promote a culture of rational discourse. So apart from the various competitions, on this page we will try to compile interesting and stimulating articles from around the world marking the occasion. We are also trying to compile as many links, web sites, blogs and discussion groups as possible so as to provide a glimpse of the scope of influence Ayn Rand continues wield more than two decades after her death, nearly 50 years after she wrote her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, more than 60 years after that perennial best-seller The Fountainhead, nearly 70 years after her first book in English, We the Living, was published, and a century after her birth in 1905, in Czarist  Russia.