Book News

A strange prudishness has seized a section of political opinion in France. The leader of the main centre-right opposition party, Jean-François Copé, declared on television last week that his "blood ran cold" when he read a children's book called Tous à poil ( All in the Buff ).

The book has comical drawings of ordinary people, policemen, bakers, and teachers, taking off their clothes. Its aim is to teach small children not to be obsessed with perfect bodies.

According to Copé, the book is being forced on primary school children as part of a campaign by an ideologically rigid socialist government to subvert traditional attitudes to gender and the family.

Tous à poil had sold only 1,000 copies before Copé's comments on television made it sound like a blend of the Marquis de Sade and Karl Marx for five-year-olds. Sales have since rocketed and the book is now the second best-selling French-language book on Amazon.

Copé's remarks have been widely mocked by in French media. The French are, after all, supposed to be relaxed about nudity; there is hardly a French movie without a nude scene; and French advertisers use female bodies (always perfect) to sell everything from cars to pasta.

All this would be mildly amusing if the remarks were not part of a campaign to radicalise the political debate in France along moral and cultural "identity" lines. Copé was trying, clumsily, to hitch himself to a bandwagon launched in recent months by ultra-Catholic conservatives and by the extreme nationalist right.

Update: French booksellers pose naked to support children's book on nudity

27th February 2013. See article from theguardian.com

After a children's book showing people naked was attacked by politicans of France's UMP party, a group of publishers and booksellers decided to register their displeasure, by posing naked (apart from strategically placed books that is).

Jean-François Copé appeared on television earlier this month to denounce Tous à Poil, a children's picture book in which characters including a policeman and a school teacher are shown getting undressed, and naked, before plunging into the sea. The authors, Claire Franek and Marc Daniau, wrote it to take the shame out of being naked. But Copé, president of France's centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire party, said that when he saw the book, he was outraged.

His comments backfired, sending the book racing to the top of bestseller lists in France, and drawing widespread condemnation, with minister for education Vincent Peillon calling Copé a spokesperson for extremist groups. .

The publisher Penguin has been accused of cowardice after it agreed to withdraw and pulp all remaining copies of a widely-acclaimed book on Hinduism to settle a civil claim from a Hindu extremist group.

The book, The Hindus, An Alternative History , by respected American academic Wendy Doniger, was published in 2009 ironically to try and offset the view that the religion is prescriptive and shame-based and to reveal compassionate and tolerant roots.

But it provoked an angry response from Hindu extremist groups who said it took a Christian missionary approach to denigrate the faith and defamed revered religious characters.

Soon after its publication, a civil case was launched by six complainants led by Dina Nath Batra. Doniger's book had intended to show the Hindu religion in a poor light and had been disrespectful of its Gods and Goddesses, he argued.

His group's claim cited the book's cover jacket which shows Lord Krishna sitting on the buttocks of a naked woman, surrounded by naked women. He claimed that the picture had attempted to ridicule, humiliate and defame the Hindus and denigrate the Hindu traditions .

Penguin was accused of surrender and cowardice by commentators and freedom of expression campaigners after copies of the settlement were released. Under the terms of the deal, Penguin agreed to stop the distribution and sale of the book in India and destroy all remaining copies of the book. In exchange, Batra and his fellow litigants agreed to drop all civil and criminal cases against the publisher.

Doniger told friends in India she was angry about the settlement and indicated she had not been consulted about it in advance. She said For all the people who have expressed outrage over this, I am deeply grateful, she told friends by email. She said she did not believe it would be possible to stop people buying the book online, although it did not appear possible today to purchase the book on Amazon from India or via local rivals.

Update: Calling for Penguin to oppose the censorship

24th February 2013. See article from bbc.co.uk

A group of leading Indian and international academics, including Ashis Nandy, Partha Chatterjee, Romila Thapar and Martha Nussbaum, have initiated a petition on change.org urging Penguin to:

Contest the suit against The Hindus through the higher courts, to ensure that a strong precedent upholding freedom of expression be established.

The petition also urged lawmakers, jurists and the legal bureaucracy to undertake a revision of Indian penal laws to protect works of serious academic and artistic merit from motivated, malicious and frivolous litigation .

A strange prudishness has seized a section of political opinion in France. The leader of the main centre-right opposition party, Jean-François Copé, declared on television last week that his "blood ran cold" when he read a children's book called Tous à poil ( All in the Buff ).

The book has comical drawings of ordinary people, policemen, bakers, and teachers, taking off their clothes. Its aim is to teach small children not to be obsessed with perfect bodies.

According to Copé, the book is being forced on primary school children as part of a campaign by an ideologically rigid socialist government to subvert traditional attitudes to gender and the family.

Tous à poil had sold only 1,000 copies before Copé's comments on television made it sound like a blend of the Marquis de Sade and Karl Marx for five-year-olds. Sales have since rocketed and the book is now the second best-selling French-language book on Amazon.

Copé's remarks have been widely mocked by in French media. The French are, after all, supposed to be relaxed about nudity; there is hardly a French movie without a nude scene; and French advertisers use female bodies (always perfect) to sell everything from cars to pasta.

All this would be mildly amusing if the remarks were not part of a campaign to radicalise the political debate in France along moral and cultural "identity" lines. Copé was trying, clumsily, to hitch himself to a bandwagon launched in recent months by ultra-Catholic conservatives and by the extreme nationalist right.

Into the River is a book by New Zealand author Ted Dawe. In September 2013 it was classified as unrestricted by the Classification Office after being submitted by the Department of Internal Affairs because of a complaint from a member of the public.

An application was made to the Film and Literature Board of Review for a review of the Classification Office's decision. The Board of Review classified the book as R14.

The novel is centred on Te Arepa Santos, a boy from a fictional village on the East Coast of the North Island in New Zealand/Aotearoa. He wins a scholarship to a boys' boarding school in Auckland, and the transition is difficult. He forges friendships, finds enemies, and discovers that his Maori identity is discounted and a disadvantage. He endures the bullying that comes from this, as well as that meted out to new boys, and sees what happens when that bullying goes too far. There are confusing encounters with sex and a growing understanding of intimacy, the use of drugs, peer pressure, deep racism, grief and death. Decision summary

The Film and Literature Board of Review noted in its decision that the book contains themes of bullying, underage casual and unsafe sex, drug taking and other matters that people may find offensive and upsetting. The Board considered that the book is likely to educate and inform young adults about the potentially negative consequences that can follow from involvement in casual sex, underage drinking, drug taking, crime, violence and bullying. The Board also considered that the book serves a useful social purpose in raising these issues for thought and debate and creating a context which may help young adults think more deeply about the immediate and long term consequences of choices they may be called upon to make.

However, there are scenes in the book that are powerful and disturbing, and in the opinion of the Board run a real risk of shocking and disturbing young readers. Whilst those aged 14 and above are likely to have a level of maturity that enables them to deal with this, those below the age of 14 may not.

The Film and Literature Board of Review classified the book as objectionable except if the publication is restricted to persons who have attained the age of 14 years. The Board also requires that any further publications of the book carry the same descriptive note as the present publication, reading parental advisory explicit content .

The Board of Review decision replaces the one by the Classification Office. It is illegal for anyone, including parents and guardians, to supply Into the River to anyone under the age of 14.

Family First national director Bob McCoskrie, who lodged the complaint about the book, said it was disappointing a restricted work was an award-winning children's book.

According to Belarusian authorities, a book by political prisoner Ales Bialiatski can damage the image of the country. Bialiatski is serving four-and-a-half years in prison, nominally for tax evasion, but the international community see his prison sentence as punishment for his principled stance in support of human rights.

In July 2013 Customs confiscated 40 copies of Bialiatski's book Enlightened by Belarus , as they were being transferred from Lithuania, where they had been published, to Belarus. The book has been included on a blacklist of goods that are barred from the territory of the Customs Union of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan. After it was first inspected, authorities concluded it could be harmful for the image of the Republic of Belarus .

Enlightened by Belarus is a collection of essays on the history of the Belarusian literature. Several essays contain critical assessments of literary works by Belarusian political prisoners, like Uladzimir Niakliaeu and Aliaksandr Fiaduta.

Ales introduced a notion of 'Belarusian prison literature'. In fact his book points out that for decades writers in Belarus have been persecuted and put in prisons, from the times of the Czar Russia and Soviet repression, to present day, says Tatsiana Raviaka, adding that the state censors cannot allow free distribution of the views on the literary process presented in Bialiatski's book. She and her colleagues from Human Rights Centre Viasna are going to appeal the ban.

Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf has becoming an exceedingly successful international e-book bestseller. Originally published in 1925, the Nazi ideology has become a bona fide online sensation, writes Fox News , topping Amazon's Propaganda & Political Psychology section.

Chris Faraone of Vocativ.com wrote that for about a year now, Hitler's book has been on the list of best-sellers on iTunes, where and that currently two different digital versions of the book rank 12th and 15th on the Politics & Current Events chart.

In January 2013, a 99 cent Kindle version began to do well among World War II books and Historical Biographies & Memoirs. Its publisher, a California company called Elite Minds Inc.,told Vocativ , Sales are great, but noted that he faces a moral dilemma in promotion in that he fears advocating something that could be misused.

Vocativ speculated that Mein Kampf's popularity on the Internet is connected to the anonymous nature of e-purchases, and to curiosity. I think I waited 45 years to read Hitler's words, writes one reviewer. Another sums it up thusly: Curiosity killed me to get this book.

Since showing up in Asia 15 years ago, Mein Kampf has sold in excess of 100,000 copies in India. In 2005, the debut of the first-ever Turkish translation sold 100,000 copies in the first two months.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, thinks online sellers should only sell annotated versions of the book. We know that the facts of life are that you cannot censor any idea from the Internet, it's simply impossible, Cooper told FoxNews.com . But an annotated version is important for someone who doesn't know the context of the time and so that they're not reading pure genocidal hate.

The glorification of Hitler, Cooper claims, is being seen among Muslims and Arabs in the Netherlands, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, Japan, India and South Korea.

Ancient books in a historic library in the Lebanese city of Tripoli have been torched by extremist muslims, after a pamphlet supposedly insulting religion was found inside one of the books.

Security sources say that up to 78,000 books, many irreplaceable ancient Muslim and Christian texts and manuscripts, are now unsalvageable.

The Al-Saeh library in the Serali neighborhood was set a-blaze after a local gang to objection to a sheet apparently insulting to the religious character Mohammed, found hidden in the pages of one of the library books.

The library's curator, Greek Orthodox priest Ibrahim Sarrouj, received threats from unidentified people who accused him of writing the article, according the Jordan News Agency.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the arson attack:

We denounce the burning of the library and reject any harm being done to Tripoli and its people, as it has been, and will remain, the city of the world and of intellectuals.