Frankfurt Book Fair slammed, boycotted for 'shutting down' Palestinian voices
The Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany, the world's largest forum for books and literature, and a literary association have come under fire after they postponed a Palestinian writer's award ceremony and canceled a public discussion with her.
In an open letter, hundreds of prominent authors and publishers from around the world slammed the organizers of the Frankfurt book fair, saying the forum has “a responsibility to be creating spaces for Palestinian writers to share their thoughts, feelings, reflections on literature through these terrible, cruel times, not shutting them down.”
The 350 authors who signed the letter included the Irish novelist Colm Toibin, the American-Libyan Pulitzer winner Hisham Matar, the British-Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie, and the British historian William Dalrymple.
Palestine-born novelist and essayist Adania Shibli was scheduled to be granted the 2023 LiBeraturpreis, an annual prize given to female writers from Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the Arab world, on 20 October for her novel “Minor Detail” which is about the suffering of the Palestinian people.
However, the LitProm association that hands out the prize said last week that it would postpone the award ceremony “due to the war in Palestine.
LitProm, which had hailed the novel as a “rigorously composed work of art that tells of the power of borders and what violent conflicts do to and with people”, said it had taken the step as a “joint decision” with the author, but Shibli’s literary agency stressed that the decision was not made with her consent.
The agency told the Guardian that Shibli would have taken the opportunity to reflect on the role of literature in these cruel and painful times.
Meanwhile, the international book fair has also explicitly voiced support for Israel, with Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, publishing a statement detailing plans “to make Jewish and Israeli voices especially visible” during the literary event. Boos has expressed “complete solidarity on the side of Israel.”
ME
