According to AFP, Saad al-Anzi, who heads the fair, said the information ministry had banned 948 books from among those screened for the fair.
Book Banning in Kuwait: How, Why, & What Comes Next
How does the Ministry of Information in Kuwait oversight committee manage to ban 4390 books in five years?
‘Literary Massacre in Kuwait’: The State of Book Banning
"In the past five years alone, 4390 book titles have been banned by the Ministry, ranging from works by local authors to other Arab writers such as Abdulrahman Munif, Ghassan Kanafani, Mourid Barghouti, and Ali Al Wardi, as well as translated works, such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Gaarder’s Sophie’s World, Zorba the Greek and the latest victim being Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude."
Fadi Zagmout on the Banning of ‘Laila and the Lamb’
"Unfortunately, banning books is a form of censorship that, nowadays, harms the book industry, limits creativity, and frustrates writers, but does not prevent the book from reaching the reader."
PEN Issues Statement About Case Against Palestinian Author Abbad Yahya and His ‘Crime in Ramallah’
"The response to his novel is not only disproportionate; it is entirely out of place."
Ashraf Fayadh Wins 2017 Oxfam Novib/PEN Award for Freedom of Expression
According to organizers, the award exists "to honour the courage of writers committed to freedom of expression despite facing countless challenges and risks."
Poet Dunya Mikhail on Kidnapped Iraqi Writer Afrah Shawqi and Elusive ‘Freedom of Expression’
In this essay, Afrah said that "freedom of expression" was the phrase most frequently used by Iraqi politicians post-2003, "yet our lives, we journalists, are risked every time we criticize any head, even if it were the head of onion."
Leading Kuwaiti Writers Saud Alsanousi and Bothayna al-Essa on Pushing Back Against a Season of Censorship
"There was a time when we'd hoped that the state might sponsor and encourage young writers, because there are quite a number of young people at work writing novels. But today I'm not asking for any support from the state; all we ask is that they leave us in peace, and that we write without interference or guidance or censorship."
Sayed Elsisi’s Book ‘Post Prose Poem’ Reportedly Banned in Lebanon
"I cannot really imagine how such academic book can be that dangerous because of examining the erotic experience in the modern Arabic poetry?"
On #BannedBooksWeek, Why Edward William Lane’s Arabic Lexicon Currently on ‘Disapproved’ List
"Texas, Quartz notes, has one of the highest incarceration rates in the U.S., with .5% of the state's population in prison."
Make Noise & Beauty on July 28, a Day of Creativity for Ashraf Fayadh
"Let us be loud enough that he hears us."
Ashraf Fayadh Poem Read Before UN Human Rights Council
"We have of course, raised Fayadh’s case with this Council before, as we have been raising, like many, the cases of Raif Badawi, Waleed Abulkhair, Ali al-Nimr and others."
