A ceremony scheduled for the Frankfurt Book Fair, at which a Palestinian author, Adania Shibli, was to receive a prestigious award, has been cancelled in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel.
More than 1,000 literary figures have signed an open letter criticizing the organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair, saying that the event “has a responsibility to be creating spaces for Palestinian writers to share their thoughts, feelings, reflections on literature through these terrible, cruel times, not shutting them down.”
A ceremony scheduled for the Frankfurt Book Fair, at which a Palestinian author, Adania Shibli, was to receive a prestigious award, has been cancelled in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel.
A jury had awarded Shibli the 2023 LiBeraturpreis award for her novel, Minor Detail. It juxtaposes the true story of the rape and murder of a Bedouin girl by an Israel army unit in 1949 with the fictional story of a female journalist investigating the crime in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, decades later.
The award, which was to be given at a ceremony on 20 October, is hosted by Litprom, a not-for-profit organisation funded in part by the German government, and the Frankfurt Book Fair. Its objective is to promote women’s literature from African, Asian, Arab and Latin American countries.
The LitProm claimed it had made a “joint decision” with Shibli to postpone the ceremony “due to the war started by Hamas, under which millions of people in Israel and Palestine are suffering.”
But the Palestinian author’s literary agency told The Guardian that the decision was made without consulting Shibli, who intended to use her awards speech to “reflect on the role of literature in these cruel and painful times.”
An open letter
More than 1,000 literary figures have signed an open letter criticizing the organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair, saying that the event “has a responsibility to be creating spaces for Palestinian writers to share their thoughts, feelings, reflections on literature through these terrible, cruel times, not shutting them down.”
Signatories include Irish novelist Colm Toibin; US Libyan Pulitzer winner Hisham Matar; British Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie; and British historian William Dalrymple.
In Germany, “Minor Detail” had already generated controversy, with journalist Ulrich Noller leaving the LiBeraturpreis jury earlier this year in protest at the book’s nomination.
Condemnations
While the author’s publisher in Turkey, Can Yayınları, condemned the decision, numerous authors, publishers, national agencies and organisations have subsequently pulled out of the fair, including the Arab Publishers Association, the Emirates Publishers Association, the Indonesian Publishers Association and PublisHer, a group of female publishing leaders.
The cancellation has also been condemned by PEN International, the global organisation for defending writers’ freedom of expression. An open letter has been signed by more than 600 writers, publishers and academics.