6 Mar 2025 | News and features, United Kingdom
Today, my son trotted off to school in a hastily assembled knight-doctor-dragon combo, firmly taking on his role as the knight from Zog, whose name I can never get right. Sir Galahad? Sir Gallopalong? Ah yes, Sir Gadabout. This was his first World Book Day, and as a book-loving writer mum, it was quite the moment.
Aside from fond memories of my own childhood World Book Days dressing up as Ratty from The Wind in the Willows (including homemade tail) and Hermione from Harry Potter (hair my own), I now have another reason to love the annual literary celebration.
Last summer, we at Index published an investigation into book censorship in UK school libraries. I have been following the worrying trend of book bans in the USA for several years, and I wanted to know whether any of that censorship is creeping into UK schools. I found out that yes, it is.
In the survey I sent to school librarians, 53% of respondents told me they had been asked to take books off their shelves. And 56% of those actually removed the books in question. When I spoke with librarians directly, many had been left shaken by their experiences.
The censored books largely featured LGBTQ+ content, as well as other areas. In one school, the entire Philip Pullman collection was removed by a senior staff member in a school with a Christian ethos. In another, all books with a hint of LGBTQ+ content were boxed up and left to gather dust.
Since publishing my investigation, even more librarians have been in touch to tell me about censorship in their schools, often telling me how lost they feel. There is no statutory requirement for a school to even have a library in the UK, let alone there being any official policy.
Recently, someone reported to me that when pupils were invited to take books into class, a child who brought a copy of Room on the Broom was swiftly turned away. They were told that they couldn’t read it because it is a Christian school. For anyone who doesn’t know this Julia Donaldson staple (that’s the second Donaldson mention in this piece, so that gives you a sense of how popular her books are), it’s about a witch, and a series of events that means she – you guessed it – does not have room on her broom.
I can’t help imagining how that child felt to have their choice of book rejected, butting up against censorship at such a young age, and being told that their favourite book was “wrong”; the parents or carers of that school second guessing what they might be allowed to send their child into school with; and then suddenly, there is a culture of self-censorship in that school.
World Book Day, in part, is a bit of a pain for parents. Costumes can be time-consuming to make or expensive to buy, and plenty of households up and down the country awoke this morning to a chorus of “World Book Day is today?” Children are ushered out the door, assured that a t-shirt and shorts is actually a very acceptable costume for the kid in insert any ordinary child in any book ever written.
But for me, in spite of whatever costume dramas might arise in the coming years (I may eat my words when that day inevitably comes), it’s a day to celebrate a love of books. And that means fighting for them.
As culture wars continue to heat up in the USA, it’s important that we do not let that slide into our classrooms, and that classrooms do not become battlegrounds. Just as it’s important that a child is not shamed for bringing in Room on the Broom, it’s vital that young people must be able to access stories where they can see their own experiences (and those of their peers) reflected.
Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love is one of our favourite stories at home. It is beautifully illustrated, and tells the tale of a boy who wants to dress up as – even imagines he is – a mermaid. He is encouraged to use his imagination by his grandmother, and he is not shamed for exploring his identity. It’s not only a gorgeous story, but a lovely way to introduce young children to discovering who they are and how others around them might explore their own identities too. Despite this, it was one of the books that librarians in my investigation reported as having been banned.
Stories help us understand the world, and they help us understand ourselves. They help us navigate things that are scary, complicated and confusing. They help flex our imaginations. And they’re joyful.
I do not want our schools to face the level of censorship that many schools in the USA do, and for our librarians to be fighting off book challenges instead of helping children find their next great read. I don’t believe widespread book bans are a real threat right now, but we now have evidence that there are pockets of this happening across the country. So this World Book Day, I’m going to harp on again about the importance of the freedom to read, and keeping our schools free from book bans.
If you care about books as much as I do (and why wouldn’t you?), please join me in celebrating books, and kicking up a fuss about the importance of good school libraries, where librarians are empowered to curate a diverse and creative collection.
11 Feb 2025 | Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Palestine, Statements
EDIT (13/02/2025): It has now been reported that Mahmoud and Ahmed Mouna have been released.
Index on Censorship is alarmed by the arrest and ongoing detention of author Mahmoud Muna, owner and bookseller of Jerusalem’s Educational Bookshop. The Educational Bookshop specialises in Arabic and English language books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the history of Jerusalem.
Mahmoud and his nephew Ahmad Muna were arrested in the bookshop by undercover Israeli police on the afternoon of Sunday, 9 February 2025. According to their family, dozens of books were confiscated, including all books that had the words “Palestine” or “Palestinian” in the title and that contained images of the Palestinian flag. Mahmoud and Ahmad were arrested on the charge of “inciting and supporting terrorism”, but the charge was reportedly changed to “disturbing the public order” during their interrogation. Ahmad Muna has since been released.
The arrests are part of broader attacks to artistic freedoms within both Israel and the Palestinian territories. Last year, Index covered the blocking of a film screening in Haifa.
The Educational Bookshop is a well-known, family-owned chain that has operated for over four decades. It sells a wide collection of books by Palestinian, Israeli and international authors and has a cafe attached to one of the branches that hosts regular literary events. Mahmoud Ahmad is also a writer and active in cultural initiatives across Palestine. In 2022, he published the first Arabic edition of the literary magazine, Granta.
Jemimah Steinfeld, CEO of Index on Censorship, said:
“Book banning has no place in a democracy and these actions don’t even stop there. The two men, Mahmoud Muna and Ahmad Muna, are remarkable by all accounts and should never have been put through this ordeal. Their arrests were another example of how authorities in Israel today are trying to silence the speech of Palestinians and the speech of those who challenge government lines more broadly. Freedom to read is not a luxury that can be given to those whose views you agree with only. It’s an essential part of free speech and it cannot happen if booksellers are unable to carry out their work safely, without fear of reprisal.”
Andrew Franklin, Profile books founder and trustee of Index on Censorship, said:
“Books are a bulwark of freedom. When they are banned, dark things follow. So for a bookshop to be raided, books seized by the police and the booksellers arrested is shocking and appalling. It speaks of grim repression and echoes the darkest days of book seizures and book burning.
“I know Mahmoud well and admire him greatly. Bookselling is never an easy profession and it’s really challenging under occupation. Mahmoud’s shops are a haven of ideas, stories and imagination in a bleak place. He’s a quiet hero.”
For press enquiries, contact: Jemimah Steinfeld at [email protected]
17 Jan 2025 | Asia and Pacific, News and features, Vietnam, Volume 53.04 Winter 2024
This article first appeared in Volume 53, Issue 4 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Unsung Heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 12 December 2024.
Hoàng Minh Tường has published 17 novels. Seven of these have been banned from re-publication or circulation in Vietnam and two had to be published overseas due to political sensitivities. But the Hanoi-based writer remains upbeat.
“I have been blessed by the heavenly gods,” said the 76-year-old, who used to work as a teacher and journalist. “Many times, I was afraid that I might be imprisoned. Yet I still remain alive.”
The award-winning novelist is currently seeking help to have his best- known novel Thời của Thánh Thần (The Time of the Gods) translated into English. On release in 2008, it was widely regarded as a literary phenomenon yet was immediately recalled and has been banned ever since.
Hoàng, and many other writers I spoke to for this article, agreed that censorship is accepted as part of living and working in Vietnam, where the Communist Party monopolises the publishing industry. The 2012 Publishing Law emphasises the need to “fight against all thoughts and behaviour detrimental to the national interests and contribute to the construction and defence of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”.
But censorship of fiction is just one part of the country’s free expression quandary. Reporters Without Borders has long categorised Vietnam as being among the worst countries for freedom of the press. The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) is the government agency responsible for state management of press, publishing and printing activities. Writers have to regularly negotiate with censors – and then creatively rise above them or patiently wait for the individuals or agencies in charge to change their minds.
Living with censorship
Hoàng, a Communist Party member, said that The Time of the Gods, written between 2005 and 2008, was a turning point in his literary career, which has spanned three decades.
“After finishing writing the book in 2008, my biggest concern was how to get it published,” he said. “I gave it to three influential friends in three publishing houses, all of whom rejected it because if they published it they would be sent to jail.”
In his banned novel, the characters are multi-faceted. Four brothers navigate different sides of armed conflicts, align with various factions and transcend the simplistic “us versus the enemy” narrative often depicted by the Communist Party.
They endure many of the hidden, historical tribulations of Vietnam – from the Maoist land reform in the 1950s, which seized agricultural land and property owned by landlords for redistribution, to the fall of Saigon in 1975, which ended the Vietnam War and resulted in a mass exodus to escape the victorious communist regime.
“The story of a family is not just the story of a single family but the story of the times, the story of the nation, the story of the two communist and capitalist factions, of the North and South regions of Vietnam and the United States,” said Hoàng. “Perhaps that is why, for the past 15 years, tens of thousands of illegal copies of the book have been printed and people still seek it out to read.”
The ban has created fertile ground for black market circulation, he said, with online and offline pirated copies often full of mistakes. There have never been any official government documents justifying the book ban, nor has there been any explanation for the sensitivities surrounding his works. He asserted that this lack of transparency and accountability was a common occurrence for novelists. “Most of the bans [on my books] were purely by word of mouth,” he said.
For years, Hoàng has communicated with editors at the state-owned Writers’ Association Publishing House (which originally published the book), but to no avail. However, the novel has made its way to global audiences, being translated into Korean, French, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese.
His 2014 novel Nguyên khí (Vitality) was originally rejected for publication, and again reasons were not disclosed. The story, revolving around Nguyễn Trãi – a 15th century historical figure who was a loyal and skilled official falsely accused of killing an emperor – symbolises the still strained relationship between single-party rule and patriotic intellectuals. In response, Hoàng revised the narrative of the novel by getting rid of a character – a security agent doubling as a censor and eavesdropper. He retitled the work to The Tragedy of a Great Character, a rebranding that managed to pass through pre-print censorship. Subsequently, in 2019, the book was published and sold out. However, its previous ban was soon recognised, so it didn’t secure a permit for republication.
Learning from history
In his 2022 article Banishing the Poets: Reflections on Free Speech and Literary Censorship in Vietnam, Richard Quang Anh Trần, assistant professor of Southeast Asian studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, concluded that the literary landscape in Vietnam was “as limited as political speech itself”.
“The boundaries of permissible speech, moreover, are ever changing that one may find oneself caught in the crosshairs and on the wrong side at any given moment,” he wrote.
Trần identified two turning points when writers were fooled into believing that the Communist Party had allowed them to challenge the established literary norms of serving the party. The first occurred in the 1950s, during a cultural-political movement in Hanoi, called the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm Affair. A group of party-loyal writers and intellectuals launched two journals, Nhân Văn (Humanity) and Giai Phẩm (Masterpieces). They sought to convince the party of the need for greater artistic and intellectual freedom. Despite their distinguished service to the state, they were condemned in state media and their publications were banned.
The second case came in the late 1980s and early 1990s during Doi Moi (the Renovation Period), a series of economic and political reforms which started in 1986. Vietnam’s market liberalisation breathed new life into war-centric literature, and many writers crafted brilliant post-war novels that challenged prevailing narratives – but their works were censored. This was done through limiting the number of approved copies, recalling and confiscating books from libraries and bookshops, and destroying original drafts.
Censorship was at its worst when the party decided to burn the books of those it regarded as its enemies. Following the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, it embarked on a campaign to eliminate what it classified as decadent and reactionary culture, including many books and magazines published in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).
“South Vietnamese publications were the main target, plus much of popular music, movies and the fine arts,” said Dr Tuấn Hoàng, associate professor of great books at Pepperdine University’s Seaver College in California. “Government workers entered businesses and private residences suspected of having such materials and took away what they could find.”
“Those materials were burned or recycled at factories,” he said. “Citizens were urged to give up banned materials to the government, or to destroy them themselves. A lot of materials were therefore destroyed in the first few years after the war.”
But some materials were hidden, circulated clandestinely or sold on the black market. Phạm Thị Hoài is one of the most celebrated writers of the post- Renovation Period, whose debut novel The Crystal Messenger was a success both at home and abroad. The first edition (1988) and second edition (1995) were published by the Writers’ Association Publishing House, bar a few censored paragraphs, according to Phạm. But it was later banned by the government.
After leaving Vietnam for Germany, in 2001 she established Talawas, an online forum dedicated to reviving literary works by Vietnamese writers. She says she has been banned from travelling back to her home country since 2004, a fact she attributes to Talawas and her literary works, which have been ambiguously deemed to be “sensitive”. Her books have not been permitted to be republished in Vietnam.
“A few years ago, a friend in the publishing industry also tried to inquire about reprinting a collection of my short stories, which were entirely about love, but no publishing house accepted it,” she said.
In 2018, the government introduced a new cybersecurity law, which has made censorship worse. Critical voices that challenge the state’s version of history online are deemed to be hostile forces that are seeking to discredit the party’s revolutionary achievements.
Appreciate, don’t criticise
Censorship also makes its way into education as, in Vietnam, literature is first and foremost intended to inculcate party- defined patriotism into young minds.
According to Dr Ngọc, a high-school literature teacher in Hanoi, Vietnamese authors who are featured in school textbooks normally have very “red” (communist) backgrounds or hold party leadership positions. She added that the higher an author’s position in government, the more focus is given to their work in textbooks. “Many great writers were unfortunately not selected for the literature textbooks,” she said.
Ngọc provides tutoring for high- school students to help them prepare for their national entrance exams. These exams mostly focus on wartime hardship and heroism. Students’ responses need to show that they revere communist leaders and revile invaders. But this teaching method is not best placed to help them appreciate literature.
But ill-fated books still find their way to readers, often through the black market. Phương (not her real name) has been selling books in Hanoi for the past two decades. She says that every now and then people still look for banned books, which she collects and sells. However, these are reserved only for her closest customers.
“I would not sell sensitive books to a random buyer,” she said. “They might be disguised security agents trying to recall the book from the market.”
5 Dec 2024 | News and features, United Kingdom
It’s that time of the year again when the team at Index on Censorship brings a little light into a dark world. This year, we have delved into the mind of author Marc Nash to come up with our banned books holiday quiz. He has taken the titles of 20 books that have been banned around the world and created fiendish cryptic clues to each of the titles.
Some clues are easy but others are tougher and you might need a clue from the fake book covers we have created to go with them.
To make things more fun, we are offering five one-year subscriptions to our amazing magazine, picked from those who take part in our cunning competition.
Index on Censorship CEO Jemimah Steinfeld said, “Books are a popular present at this time of year but in many parts of the world access to them is restricted. We want people to have fun with this quiz (warning: it’s hard!) while appreciating the underlying message – that book banning is only becoming more pronounced and must be fought. After all, literature is a portal to other worlds and an essential vehicle to increase empathy and understanding. We are all the poorer when literature cannot flourish.”
To enter the competition, click here.
