Books and Magazines News

A week before the scheduled launch of the latest book by Professor Frank Furedi, the executive director of the leading conservative think tank MCC (Mathias Corvinus Collegium) Brussels, the bookstore that previously agreed to host the event cancelled the event saying:

After careful consideration, we have found out that the political connotation of the initiative is more strongly marked than we initially understood. Our venue has always maintained a line of neutrality, this choice allows us to ensure an inclusive space that respects all sensibilities.

The event was supposed to take place on Monday, September 30th, in the Piola.libri bookstore, just a few minutes' walk from the European Commission's headquarters and other major EU institutions.

In their press release, MCC explained that the critically acclaimed book, The War Against the Past, explores today's cultural crusade against Western history which is being increasingly dismissed as toxic. From the toppling of statues to the removal of historical terms from everyday vocabulary, Furedi examines the growing effort to cast the past in a negative light.

The MCC has secured an alternative venue for the book launch, which will be announced shortly.

Hungarian authorities have fined a bookseller for selling a British graphic novel without closed wrapping - saying it breached an anti-gay law on LGBT literature for under-18s.

The retailer was fined 12m forints (£27,400), for selling Heartstopper without wrapping it in plastic foil, as required by law. Officials said the book depicts homosexuality and was sold to minors.

In 2021, the government of prime minister Viktor Orban introduced a law banning the display and promotion of homosexuality among under-18s. The censorship laws says that minors cannot be shown pornographic content, or anything that encourages gender change or homosexuality.

The Heartstopper series of books, written and illustrated by the British author Alice Oseman, follow the lives of two British teenagers attending a fictional school who meet and fall in love. It is billed as a book about life, love, and everything that happens in between. It has since been acquired and adapted by the streaming service Netflix, which plans to release a second series in August.

Tim Minchin, the comedian behind the Matilda musical, has described editing Roald Dahl's books to better suit modern audiences as a slippery slope . The British-Australian composer and entertainer, who wrote the music for the musical based on Dahl's book, said removing outdated language in the author's works set a precedent for needing to change all texts that might offend people and warned they could need to be constantly updated to keep up with changing sensibilities. He explained in an interview with the Guardian's Saturday magazine:

It seems there's an incredible slippery slope problem with editing texts,  I mean, my initial reaction, when I heard about it? 'Now we'll have to get all the rapes out of all the history books. Then the world will be a better place.'

It's not actually about morality. It's about keeping the property, owned by the Dahls and Netflix, contemporary --  It's an interesting part of modern progressivism, that a huge amount of change is happening because corporations have identified where their bottom-line is best served.

Problem one, as I see it: If you do this once, you'll have to do it to all texts ever, taking out all the words that might upset people.

Problem two: You'll have to change it all again in five years when the new words you put in are out of vogue. So that's two slippery-slope problems. You're standing at the top of a double slide. And now you're spraying soap on the fucking things, he said.