Two of the best-loved names in contemporary literature, Alan Bennett and Ian McEwan, will make exclusive appearances at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year.

They are among more than 650 authors to feature in the world’s biggest and most prestigious book event, which is sponsored by The Times.

The festival’s programme launch yesterday heralded another coup for the organisers: “virtual” appearances by Norman Mailer and Alice Munro. Owing to age and infirmity, neither author has been available to meet the public for some time. They appear by means of Margaret Atwood’s remarkable LongPen invention, which features for the first time at a book festival.

Other highlights of the two-week festival, which runs from August 11 to 27, include appearances by such luminaries as Richard Ford, Edward de Bono, Margaret Atwood, Sebastian Faulks, Michael Frayn, Graham Swift and Yann Martel.

They will be supplemented by a host of popular names, including Andrew Marr, Niall Ferguson, John Pilger, Richard Dawkins, Jeremy Paxman and Clive James.

Joyce Carol Oates and Edmund White will be lanching books; other authors celebrating new works at the festival will be Fay Weldon, Germaine Greer, A.N. Wilson and Ben Okri.

Alan Bennett will be launching his latest, long-awaited fiction, The Uncommon Reader, and Ian McEwan will be in conversation with Ian Rankin, one of 200 leading Scottish writers making an appearance.

James Kelman, Alexander McCall Smith, William McIlvanney, Alan Warner and Iain Banks will all be there.

The cream of American fiction will be well represented in the Scottish capital. As well as Richard Ford and Joyce Carol Oates, the Orange winners Ann Patchett and Valerie Martin will appear, along with Edmund White. The festival will also see the first sales of Canongate’s long-awaited illustrated version of Yann Martel’s Man Booker prizewinner, Life of Pi.

The artist is the 34-year-old Croatian Tomislav Torjanac, who was chosen from 600 entries in a competition that was organised by The Timesin October 2005.

The festival has become a recognised platform for leading thinkers from the worlds of literature, science, politics, business, economics and journalism. It is given much credit for the city’s naming in 2004 as Unesco City of Literature.

Special themes this year include a focus on the 300th anniversary of the Union. William Hague, who recently published a biography of William Wilberforce, will be discussing modern as well as historic manifestations of slavery; and India and China will feature in many debates.

Internationalism distinguishes Edinburgh from many other book festivals, and this year writers will be travelling from 40 countries.

Catherine Lockerbie, the festival director, said: “We are extremely proud to have created a programme of truly global reach this year and to have discovered entirely new ways of including the world’s great writers.

“Thanks to Margaret Atwood’s visionary genius, outstanding authors thousands of miles distant will be brought to the book festival public with startling immediacy and intimacy, complete with book signatures.

“It is an astonishing addition to the ways in which ideas and thoughts transmit in live encounters – the passion which drives our festival. We’re immensely excited to be welcoming so many aspiring writers and thinkers, from so many nations, to the vibrant heart of Edinburgh, Unesco City of Literature.”

The festival incorporates the RBS Children’s Programme, an extensive children’s book festival.

Ticket prices have been frozen for the seventh consecutive year and more events than ever are free. Tickets go on sale on Tuesday.

By telephone, 0845-373 5888; online, www.edbookfest.co.uk; in person, Waterstones, 83 George Street, Edinburgh, and Festival Box Office, Charlotte Square Gardens, Edinburgh.

Top of the bill

Andrew O’Hagan and Norman Mailer The old lion and the young lion. Andrew O’Hagan, one of the most gifted young writers of his generation, interviews the titan of American literature about his prodigious career

Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro Two legendary figures of Canadian prose come together. The famously witty and intelligent Ms Atwood, recipient of the special Edinburgh Enlightenment Award, interviews Alice Munro, arguably the finest living story writer

Ian Rankin and Ian McEwan Edinburgh’s own doyen of crime talks to one of Britain’s most stylish and acclaimed writers, Ian McEwan, who has just published On Chesil Beach

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