Publisher says it was forced to withdraw Wendy Doniger's book The Hindus because of law threatening jail for insults to religionPenguin India has said "intolerant and restrictive" Indian laws forced it to remove a book from sale after it tried to defend an American author's religious history against objections from a conservative Hindu group.The publisher's decision this week to withdraw and pulp all copies of the historian Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History shocked writers and intellectuals in India, with some worrying it was a sign of rising intolerance against dissent in the country.Doniger defended Penguin India in a statement, saying the publisher had battled for four years against a lawsuit filed by the Hindu group Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti (Save Education Movement).The group objected to the book's description of mythological texts as fictional and said it hurt "the religious feelings of millions of Hindus", according to the lawsuit, which also named Doniger and the New-York-based arm of the publisher Penguin Group Inc as defendants.Penguin India said it "believes, and has always believed, in every individual's right to freedom of thought and expression, a right explicitly codified in the Indian constitution", according to a statement from the company released on Friday.It warned, however, that India's penal code would "make it increasingly difficult for any Indian publisher to uphold international standards of free expression".The code,... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2014-02-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
Salman Rushdie, the author of "The Satanic Verses," was brutally attacked just as he was about to speak to an audience at the Chautauqua Institution. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-08-12 22:05:09 UTC ]
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Salman Rushdie—the former PEN America President and Booker Prize-winning author of Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses, and Joseph Anton—just sold a new novel, and it sounds like a doozy. Billed as a translation of an ancient Indian myth, Victory City—Rushdie’s fifteenth novel, his first... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-07-01 15:22:16 UTC ]
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In 1989, Iran’s ruler, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. PW’s in-depth coverage looked at the industry’s response to this unprecedented situation. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-02-25 05:00:00 UTC ]
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The increased visibility of international editions on Amazon’s Global Store is fuelling fears that the retailer’s approach is incompatible with local rights-based publishing. Continue reading at The Bookseller
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"The race for reach is over," Conde Nast International digital chief Wolfgang Blau said at the Digiday Publishing Summit Europe in Nice, France, on Thursday. Instead the focus is back to basics: building a passionate audience around a topic and establishing deep connections to them. For Conde... Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2016-10-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Minister says The Satanic Verses author’s scheduled address next week ‘crosses one of our red lines’Iran is threatening to boycott the forthcoming Frankfurt book fair because organisers have invited Salman Rushdie to deliver the keynote address at the opening press conference. In February 1989,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-10-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publisher says it was forced to withdraw Wendy Doniger's book The Hindus because of law threatening jail for insults to religionPenguin India has said "intolerant and restrictive" Indian laws forced it to remove a book from sale after it tried to defend an American author's religious history... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-02-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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