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Canadian author Margaret Atwood has expressed reservations about her decision to pull out of the Emirates Airline international festival of literature after believing reports that Geraldine Bedell's novel The Gulf Between Us had been "banned" and "censored" for containing—among other thing—the mention of a gay sheikh.
"Dear readers, my head is spinning," she wrote in the Guardian. "This was a case for Anti-Censorship Woman!". However, she has now learnt that rather than banned, Bedell's book was not poised to be launched at the festival, although Isobel Abulhoul, fair founder and director, did reject it and did offer a "candid" explanation to Penguin in September when she was preparing the show's schedule.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/21/margaret-atwood-gulf-literar... target="_blank" title="In">http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/21/margaret-atwood-gulf-literar... a separate piece, the Guardian says that it has seen that email from Abulhoul, dated 19th September 2008, in which she says the novel was "extremely well written and should sell well" but added: "However it is definitely not a book that we can launch at EAIFL for the following reasons: one of the Sheikhs is gay and has an English boyfriend; it talks about Islam and queries what is said; it is set in the Gulf and focuses on the Iraq war and could be a minefield for us."
This train of events, which Atwood claims is different to what she understood from reading reports on various news websites and blogs, appears to have softened her attitude. She writes: "So what do I do now? Having leapt into this dog's breakfast, I have it all over my face." Atwood concludes: "Every country has some form of the not-permitted. In Canada, child pornography and hate literature are both illegal. What should not be permitted seems self-evident to those within a culture, though often bizarre to those outside it."
Meanwhile, the website of the Emirates Airline international festival of literature, has removed the link from its news section to Abulhoul's original press statement reacting to the initial furore over pieces in the Times and Telegraph first reporting the ban. In that statement Abulhoul wrote: "I knew that her work could offend certain cultural sensitivities." In a new statement put up on Saturday (21st), Abulhoul states: "We are naturally disappointed that Ms Atwood can not now attend the Festival in person after the unfortunate chain of events over the past week initiated by a series of misleading and incomplete press reports."
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23648148-details/All+auth... target="_blank" title="The">http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23648148-details/All+auth... Evening Standard's literary editor, meanwhile, is less forgiving about all of this. "But what literary festivals are not for is more easily stated. They are not for censorship and the suppression of free speech," he writes, adding: "All the writers looking forward to a short break in Dubai - they include Simon Armitage, Rachel Billington, Kate Mosse, Penny Vincenzi and Kate Adie - really should read Bedell's novel and ask themselves what they think they are doing attending a festival that has banned such a book. Betraying freedom of expression for a few days by the seaside in a luxury hotel, perhaps?"
Atwood meanwhile is considering her options. "Should I - for instance - appear at the festival on video screen? Or are there yet more twists and turns to this story?"