Margaret Atwood, the doyenne of literary festivals, issued a mea culpa over the weekend explaining that she may have been too hasty in cancelling her appearance at a Dubai festival this week and declaring that a British novelist had been censored before fully understanding all the facts.
“Having leapt into this dog's breakfast, I have it all over my face,” she wrote in a statement for the British newspaper The Guardian on Saturday. Atwood is known for her strong defence of the freedom of writers, and her role in anti-censorship group International PEN. But in this case, Atwood said she misjudged the case.
Atwood was scheduled to attend the inaugural Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature. She was possibly the most celebrated Western author on the roster, which also includes British poet Simon Armitage and Giles Foden (The Last King of Scotland).
But then last Tuesday, news of a British writer who is not attending, Geraldine Bedell, convinced Atwood to cancel. Bedell decried in the press that her novel, The Gulf Between Us, was being banned because, she said, one of its characters was a gay sheik. Bedell and her publisher Penguin had hoped to launch the book, which Bedell describes as a romantic comedy, at the Dubai festival.
But the festival rejected the book in September. For an unspecified reason, however, news of that only exploded on the world literary stage last week when Bedell began to claim censorship. Bedell, who writes for The Observer newspaper, wrote in a blog entry for sister paper The Guardian that the director of the festival responded to the book with a long list of reasons why the novel wasn't suitable.
“After all the initial excitement on both sides, they took the book, sat on it for a long time and finally came back with an almost comically long list of reasons why they couldn't have it at their festival,” Bedell wrote in her Books Blog entry.
“These included ‘it is set in the Gulf,' ‘it talks about Islam,' and ‘it focuses on the Iraq war and could be a minefield for us.' ”
Bedell alleged that this amounted to censorship – or self-censorship to avoid a political fallout. “I've worked as a journalist in the Gulf, and I recognize what's happening here: It's a kind of self-censorship that's terrified someone else – other people – might be offended, regardless of whether the material in question is really offensive at all,” Bedell wrote on the blog.
Festival director Isobel Abulhoul seemed to add to fuel to the fire by reportedly responding in a widely reported statement that “I knew that her work could offend certain cultural sensitivities. I did not believe that it was in the festival's long term interests to acquiesce to her publisher's request to launch the book at the first festival of this nature in the Middle East.”
That's when Atwood got involved.
“This was a case for Anti-Censorship Woman!” Atwood wrote in her Guardian mea culpa Saturday. She could not be immediately reached for comment yesterday.
“I nipped into the nearest phone booth, hopped into my cape and coiled my magic lasso, and swiftly cancelled my own appearance; because, as a vice-president of International PEN, I could not give my August Seal of Elderly Writer Approval to such a venue,” she wrote in the paper.
What Atwood says she believes happened this time was that instead of simply responding back something to the effect of “thanks, but no thanks,” which would quell any further controversy, Abulhoul, directing this brand new Dubai festival for the first time, made the mistake of being too candid with her remarks without realizing how they might be construed. Atwood's self-deprecating tone is intentional because, as she explains, this was before she spoke to the festival director. Publishers ask festivals around the world all the time to help to launch a book. Those requests are routinely accepted and rejected. It's the normal course of business in the industry.
Atwood says she was told by Abulhoul that the book wasn't being banned from the festival nor from Dubai. According to Atwood, Penguin claims it is being banned because a local bookseller told them so. Yet the book isn't even due to be published until April.
In short, Atwood says she doesn't know what to think, but seems to argue that terms like “banned” and “censorship” may have been thrown around carelessly in this case.
So she is contemplating making an appearance through a video link with the festival, although not in person. The festival will also now host an event with International PEN talking about issues of censorship.
As Atwood concludes in her statement, “Books are seriously ‘banned' and ‘censored' around the world, and people have been imprisoned, murdered and executed for what they've written. A loose use of these terms is not helpful.”
