A Chinese library burns books and sparks outrage
Remember when time travel was just a really cool idea in science fiction where your biggest concern was either correcting a dystopian future or not hooking up with your mom?… Read more »
China and Sweden continue to spar over missing bookseller
China and Sweden have renewed a war of words over the abduction and detention of Gui Minhai, a dissident bookseller and publisher. The latest rankle occurred last week when Swedish… Read more »
Anonymous anti-Trump author censured: Hachette holds hard line
Last week we posted our admittedly somewhat jaded reactions to the news that the anonymous author of the much-discussed anti-Trump op-ed in the New York Times has written a book.… Read more »
#MeToo authors in the classroom: OK or nah? The “Gray Lady” weighs in
Among the many vexing questions to arise in the wake of #MeToo: is there a place in the classroom for books written by men who have been accused of sexual… Read more »
Alaa al-Aswany, Egyptian author and activist, is being sued by the Egyptian military for insulting President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
Alaa al-Aswany, author of The Yacoubian Building and critic of the political regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, will face a lawsuit filed by the military authority of Egypt. According to reporting… Read more »
Amazon removes from the marketplace books promoting dangerous and false “cures” for autism
One week after concerns regarding Amazon’s algorithmic promotion of whack-o conspiracy theory garbage made headlines, the company is back in the news for removing a different breed of insane and… Read more »
The resurgence of the censoring asterisk
Depending on your level of presence on Twitter, you might be familiar with the current linguistic practice of replacing some letters—typically vowels—with asterisks, ie. obf*scation, for emphasis in tweets. Here’s an… Read more »
The South African apartheid and the burning of books
It’s been twenty-four years since the apartheid reign in South Africa had been put to rest, and since today is a spooky day, we’re going to talk about another chilling… Read more »
Tehran Book Fair Uncensored continues, highlighting censored voices from the Persian diaspora
The Tehran International Book Fair (TIBF) came to a close on May 12th, two days after Donald Trump announced that the United States will be withdrawing from the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal. Several… Read more »
As US-Iranian relations worsen, Tehran’s book festival might be getting better
Yesterday, Donald Trump pulled out of what was considered to be Obama’s signature foreign policy deal — an agreement with Iran to lift sanctions in exchange for nuclear accountability. In return,… Read more »