Abulhoul defends Dubai Bedell ban
The Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature has defended its decision not to allow Penguin author Geraldine Bedell to launch her new book The Gulf Between Us at the event. The organisers withdrew the book after discovering the novel featured a homosexual sheikh who had an English boyfriend and was also set in the backdrop to the Iraq war.
Isobel Abulhoul, director, has now issued the following statement: "I have lived in Dubai for forty years. Based on my knowledge of who would appeal to the book-reading community in the Middle East, and having read 150 pages of Bedell’s manuscript 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 (Penguin) request to launch the book at the first festival of this nature in the Middle East."
Abulhoul, who runs Magrudy's Bookshops in Dubai, added: "We do, of course, acknowledge the excellent publicity campaign being run by Penguin which will no doubt increase sales of her book and we wish Ms Bedell the very best."
Source: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/77512-abulhoul-defends-dubai-bedell-ba...
Author's reaction here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/feb/17/dubai-literary-fes...
That's a good one, adey...
Thanks for my morning chuckle!
from the authors piece in the Guardian:
"The Dubai literary festival has a vision statement in which it claims to seek to "awaken the imagination". It is tempting to feel they should have added "though only in approved directions".
"Deaths in the Bible. God - 2,270,365
not including the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the
many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc because no specific numbers
were given. Satan - 10."
"Deaths in the Bible. God - 2,270,365
not including the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the
many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc because no specific numbers
were given. Satan - 10."
is by that very definition not art but decoration, be it on a wall, on a screen or in the mind.
So that being the case I would have the Dubai bookshop scrub the term Literary Festival.
Prehabs they could call it the 'Pretty & Comfortable Reading Material Sop'
"Deaths in the Bible. God - 2,270,365
not including the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the
many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc because no specific numbers
were given. Satan - 10."
Because the banning of books at a literary festival is not very literary or festival like.
A bit like the Nazi and Soviet 'realist' styles of Art and the separating out of 'degenerate' art.
I criticize it from an Artistic standpoint not a geographical one.
"Deaths in the Bible. God - 2,270,365
not including the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the
many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc because no specific numbers
were given. Satan - 10."
...the fear is that by talking about homosexuality, the (mostly) heterosexual citizenry of the Gulf might be inclined to switch teams?
Are you serious?
And to answer you question, I guess it bothers me so much because I feel like when this region 'buys' our educational institutions and hires some of our best and brightest minds to come and work for them, they fail to appreciate that they got that way precisely BECAUSE of the fact that we can have open and critical discussions about topics.
It just seems to me like the Gulf wants lots of things -- and they've got plenty of cash to buy them -- but they don't want to engage in the difficult work that's necessary to do something well and properly.
ummjake, the 1st amendment is an American add-on to the constitution, not a Qatari one.
If you can't talk about something...well, then there's just not much you can do.
Guess NYU and all those universities setting up shop over there should pack up and head home then...
Just because you talk about something doesn't mean you have to condone it. You can have a frank and open discussion about homosexuality and Islam's view on it, and then talk about how it's different than this other perspective...
Sometimes it just seems like this region will never understand the very positive value of a free and open discussion of ideas...even those you don't agree with.
Here are two nice quotes I grabbed from her blog:
"The only objection that made any sense at all, from their point of view, was that a minor character, Sheikh Rashid, is gay and has an English boyfriend. To which I can only shrug and say that some people are gay, and this is fiction."
And this other one:
"The organisers claim to be looking for an exchange of ideas – but not, apparently, about sex or faith. That doesn't leave literature an awful lot of scope."
Most khaleeji won't acknowledge that homosexuality exists in their own culture, let alone that it flourishes here...