Terms found to be offensive will be redacted and replaced in reissues of several books by British children’s author Roald Dahl. This decision raises indignation in the United Kingdom.
References to weight, mental health, violence, or racial or gender issues will be removed from reissues of the author’s various works, according to the conservative daily Daily Telegraph.
Thus, the term “big” will no longer be used to describe Augustis Gloop of Charlie and the chocolate factory. The “cloud men” of “James and the Giant Peach” will become the “cloud people”. All changes are “reduced and carefully considered”, assured a spokesperson for the Roald Dahl Story company.
“Roald Dahl was no angel”, reacted on Twitter the British writer Salman Rushdie, icon of freedom of expression victim of a violent attack six months ago, “but this is absurd censorship “.
The boss of PEN America Suzanne Nossel, an organization bringing together 7,000 writers for freedom of expression, judged that “selective editing to make the words of literature conform to particular sensibilities could represent a dangerous new weapon”.
“If Dahl offends us, let’s not reprint it,” writer Philip Pullman told the BBC on Monday, stressing that millions of his original books would remain in circulation for many years to come, regardless of any changes made to them. new editions.
The author, essential in the libraries of many children, died in 1990 at the age of 74. At the end of 2020, his family had apologized for the anti-Semitic remarks made by the author 40 years ago. The creator of Matilda Or The Good Big Giant notably made openly anti-Semitic statements in an interview with the British magazine New Statesman in 1983, legitimizing anti-Semitism and seeming to find justifications for Hitler’s crimes.
With Agence France-Presse