English author Geraldine Bedell was set to launch her novel, The Gulf Between Us, at the Dubai Literary Festival but has now been told she cannot participate for a laundry list of bizarre reasons.
Apparently, the organizers of the Dubai literary festival, or whoever made the decision on their behalf, couldn't see this. After all the initial excitement on both sides, they took the book, sat on it for a long time and finally came back with an almost comically long list of reasons why they couldn't have it at their festival. These included "it is set in the Gulf", "it talks about Islam", and "it focuses on the Iraq war and could be a minefield for us".
These weird-sounding objections become even weirder when you look at the book, which is extremely respectful of Islam (the Church of England actually gets a much rougher ride) and in which the Iraq invasion is only a distant threatening rumble, still several months off.
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. 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".
I hope some of this preemptive negative press helps nudge the festival towards opening their criteria a little because if we can't discuss political and social differences in literature what hope do we have in politics and life in general.
*Edit - February 18th* - It has now been announced that Margaret Atwood has decided to pull out of the Emirates Airline international festival of literature because of this Bedell's banning. It should be noted that Atwood is a vice president of International Pen, and following her announcement other authors including Anthony Horowitz and Lauren Child have said that they too are considering dropping the event from their schedules.
With this being the inauguraul festival in Dubai and the first of its kind in the Middle East all eyes are on the event... we will see how this progresses.
[Now reading: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson]
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