Freedom to Read Hitler's book, Censoring Milan Kundera

.."the Arab cultural production, at least as seen through
the lens of the Cairo Book Fair,
"reflects above all, a certain emptiness."

There was this story about the Strange case of the antisemitic author and the Vancouver Public Library that featured him in an evening that "celebrates" the National Freedom to Read Week;

And then there was this story about a campaign by left-wing and Arab splinter groups to boycott the Book Fair in Turin, where Israel is this year's the guest country. "The initiative has the backing of Tariq Ramadan, the ever-present and controversial Islamic preacher who, in an interview with the news agency Adn-Kronos, trickled his rhetoric vitriol into the debate.

And now this has come to light:

David Bidussa reminds Tariq Ramadan and all the others who criticised the Turin Book Fair for inviting Israel as its guest country, that things are far more amiss in Arab countries than in Northern Italy. "It is not what they are saying that makes the attitude of Tariq Ramadan and the Arab Writers Union so questionable, but what they are not defending, and that is freedom. At the same time as Tariq Ramadan was calling for a boycott of the book fairs in Turin and Paris, Milan Kundera was being censored at the Cairo Book Fair and his books banned. None of these people who present themselves as the great defenders of freedom and who speak out against suppression – Tariq Ramadan being the most vociferous of them all – none of them has taken the time to find the words or the way, to step out of line from the chorus of disapproval about Israel and to stand up for the freedom of the book in Cairo."

Why was Milan Kundeira censored?

According to this blog, here,

The Egyptian police have seized boxes of books deemed subversive or immoral, such as For bread alone by Mohamed Choukri, The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera etc.

According to Al-Jazeera here,

"...certain books didn't make it to the fair. As Lebanese publisher Dar al-Adab discovered when the boxes containing works by Milan Kundera, Nikos Kazantzakis and noted Egyptian authors Nawal al-Saadawi and Edward al-Kharrat were missing.

"We knew from previous experience that the censor had banned them," said Nabil Nofal, a member of the sales team, adding that they never receive official notification or explanation for why the books weren't allowed.

According to literary observers, subject matters involving sex, controversial politics and attacks on religion set off alarms among the censors.


What are Egyptians free to read?

According to Al-Jazeera, the crowd-pleasers are

"...anti-Christian polemics advocating conversion to Islam as the only solution to a flawed religion and of course plenty of editions of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" for sale.

"It makes up a big part of our success, especially among the 18 to 25 crowd," said Mahmud Abdallah of the Syrian-Egyptian Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi publishing house.