Cities are often treated as points on a map — defined by borders, skylines, and statistics. Yet they are also crossings: of languages and faiths, of labour and longing, of memory and possibility. A cosmopolis is not simply a large city or a polished global hub, but a lived condition where difference is ordinary and histories overlap.

Through literature, translation, history, and foodways, George Town Literary Festival 2026 asks how shared worlds are nonetheless made — with coexistence understood as a daily practice: unfinished, fragile, and profoundly human.