LONDON: Prominent literary figures and publishing houses have warned that Germany’s Frankfurt Book Fair is silencing Palestinian voices after the event canceled an awards ceremony set to honor a Palestinian writer.
Adania Shibli, a Palestine-born novelist and essayist, was due to receive the 2023 LiBeraturpreis at the world’s largest trade fair for books, The Guardian reported.
The award honors women writers from the Arab world, Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Shibli is the author of “Minor Detail,” which was published in English in 2020 and nominated in the US for the National Book Awards as well as for various international prizes.
The novel examines the true story of the 1949 rape and murder of a Bedouin girl by Israeli soldiers through the fictional eyes of a Ramallah-based journalist covering the story decades later.
But last week, the LitProm association that awards the LiBeraturpreis 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.”
More than 350 authors 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.
