Turkish publisher and translator of French writer's Les Exploits d'un Jeune Don Juan accused of corrupting public moralityA publisher and a translator are to go on trial in Istanbul for corrupting public morality – for publishing a book written more than 100 years ago.Les Exploits d'un Jeune Don Juan (The Exploits of a Young Don Juan) by Guillaume Apollinaire is not the first of the French surrealist's books to fall foul of Turkey's strict censorship laws: Rahmi Akda was convicted of publishing obscene or immoral material after he published Les Onze Mille Verges in 1999.There is some doubt as to whether Apollinaire was really the author of Les Exploits d'un Jeune Don Juan, which chronicles the sexual awakening of Roger, a 15-year-old boy whose fixation with carnal knowledge turns him into an object of desire for a large group of women – including his own aunt.Translated by Ismail Yerguz for the publisher Sel Yayincilik, the book's Turkish edition appeared in January 2009. The same year a complaint was filed in a local court, which was dismissed when academics concluded Les Exploits d'un Jeune Don Juan should be considered a genuine work of literature.But in 2013 Turkey's supreme court overturned the verdict, concluding the novel lacked "any artistic or literary value". Instead, it was alleged to be filled with "vulgar, ordinary phrases, which intend to provoke sexual desires by way of representing deviant, lesbian, unnatural, even animal-related sexual relationships... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2013-12-16 00:00:00 UTC ]