Dostoevsky book among hundreds banned in Kuwait literature festival
Kuwaiti authorities
have blacklisted nearly 1,000 books at a literature festival, including one
by Fyodor
Dostoevsky. Saad al-Anzi, who
heads the Kuwait international
literary festival, said the information ministry had banned 948 books including
Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, a novel set in 19th-century Russia that
explores morality, free will and the existence of God.
Dostoevsky joins a
growing list of writers banned in the relatively moderate Gulf state, where
there is a growing conservative trend in politics and society. The information
ministry has blacklisted more than 4,000 books over the past five years,
including Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and One
Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
All titles on show at
the 43rd edition of Kuwait’s book fair, which runs until 24 November, were
screened in advance by a censorship committee as per Kuwaiti regulations.The committee works
under a 2006 law on press and publications, which outlines a string of
punishable offences for publishers of both literature and journalism. Offences
include insulting Islam or Kuwait’s judiciary, threatening national security,
“inciting unrest” and committing “immoral” acts.
Activists took to the
streets of the capital twice in September to protest against rising censorship.
During the 1970s and
1980s Kuwait was a regional publishing hub, home to the high-brow, pan-Arab
cultural journal al-Arabi and a string of popular scientific and literary
books. But in recent years
religious conservatives and tribal leaders have gained ground in parliament.
Kuwait is the only Gulf state with elected lawmakers.
