Publishers resist book bans by US

Escalating attempts to remove works featuring themes such as LGBTQ lifestyles and race relations from US bookshelves are facing growing resistance from publishers and rights groups, a major topic at this year’s Frankfurt book fair.

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There has been an explosion in efforts to get books viewed as overly progressive banned in US schools and public libraries.

In 2020, just under 300 titles faced “challenges” - demands to restrict access to them or remove them - across the United States, according to the American Library Association (ALA).

That number began surging the following year and reached over 9 000 in 2023, said the nongovernmental organisation (NGO), whose office for intellectual freedom has been tracking challenges since 1990.

“It’s an ideological mission from people on the right. This is just the most recent instance of hate demonstrating itself in culture,” said Jon Yaged, CEO of Macmillan Publishers, at the Frankfurt event, the world’s biggest book fair, where the subject was hotly debated.

It is part of what PEN International says is a growing global trend, with the literary freedom NGO reporting a “dramatic increase in book bans and censorship”, from Afghanistan to Russia.