The Dar Al Kitab’s display booth at the Tunis International Book Fair (French: FILT) reopened to the public on Saturday after its temporary closure on Friday, its owner said. All copies of a Tunisian book, freshly published, were withdrawn from the shelves of the Dar Al Kitab’s booth at the book fair and the booth was shut down, shortly after the opening of the fair in Kram. “That book has not been censored and our booth has reopened to the public,”owner Dar Al Kitab, Habib Zoghbi, told TAP on Saturday. The latter added that “his stand was temporarily closed by the organising committee of the fair which had noted (Friday) the presence of a book not on the list of books presented to organisers for display.» The publisher stressed that the book was not on the list sent to the FILT management to check whether or not it conforms to the internal regulations of the fair.” He said “the Minister of Cultural Affairs had no connection with what happened” on the first day of the fair which is far from being an act of “censorship”. The publisher also denies any intervention by security forces, while referring to rumours on social media about this. In an earlier statement to TAP last night, the publisher said that “the novel was withdrawn by the services of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs” which also decided to close its stand. For his part, president of the Union of Tunisian Publishers Riadh Ben Abderrazak said in a new statement to TAP, that the controversial book was not censored but rather withdrawn because it was not registered on the initial list of books to be exhibited. This member of the FILT organising committee announced that an additional list of publications published between the closing of the call for applications and the beginning of the fair was proposed. «Only publications that promote violence, terrorism, charlatanism or witchcraft are banned from exhibition at the Tunis International Book Fair,» said Ben Abderrazak. The fair’s director, Zahia Jouirou, confirmed the temporary closure of Zoghbi’s stand for violating the fair’s rules. She also pointed out that the decision was taken independently of the Ministry of Culture, which organises FILT. She asserted that the book that is the subject of all this controversy is being sold normally in Tunisian bookshops and online. She also said that the publisher claimed to have sent an additional list on 25 April, two days before the opening of the fair, whereas the committee had finished its work long before that date. The organising committee had contacted the publishers to provide them with the list of new publications so that they could be registered on the special application that facilitates public access to the various books on display, she said. The case of the Tunisian novel and publisher marked the opening of the Tunis Book Fair, which returned to its spring event after a one-year absence. “Tunisia’s Frankenstein» by Kamel Riahi is a 256-page opus. This book is a revisited adaptation of the novel by the famous British novelist Mary Shelly, “Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus”, published in 1818. The withdrawal of this new novel has been, since its announcement, widely contested by creators in the literary and publishing community. Controversy and mixed reactions followed, between book and publishing professionals and the official side. Opinions were largely divided between those who cried censorship and the official version, which put forward reasons linked to the rules of the fair prohibiting any publication not declared in advance to the organising committee. The Tunis International Book Fair takes place from April 28 to May 7, 2023. This 37th edition is placed under the sign “Fly … by the wings of the book”.

Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse