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Now I haven’t seen the book in question - or even Hilary Swank’s heartwarming film version - but this time it’s not scrotums, penguins or even Harry Potter, it’s a bit of swearing.

The suspension of the teacher involved - apparently for “insubordination” - makes this one of the more serious cases. After all, of the 420 challenges to books reported to the American Library Association last year only (only!) 65 resulted in a book being pulled. But it’s eerily familiar in one crucial aspect. According to union officials there was only one member of the school board who objected. It’s the wishes of a vocal minority, and not the silent majority which are being respected once again.

Source: The Guardian

«Un tribunal griego acaba de resolver que se retire de las bibliotecas escolares la novela Zigzag entre naranjos amargos (Premio Nacional de Narrativa 2000), de Ersi Sotiropulu, como resultado de la demanda cursada por el político de extrema derecha Constantinos A. Plevris contra el Ministerio de Educación de Grecia.

La decisión del tribunal, basada en la opinión del juez, según el cual el libro «contiene pasajes claramente pornográficos y vulgares», es una muestra de conservadurismo extremo, que los intelectuales griegos interpretan como un ataque sin precedentes contra la razón, la libertad de expresión y la independencia de la creación artística y la educación.

La sociedad (de)cata denuncia la intervención de la justicia para retirar de las bibliotecas escolares la novela de Ersi Sotiropulu, Zigzag entre naranjos amargos, como un acto de censura y de intromisión en el proceso literario y educativo. Por ello, solicita que el Ministerio de Educación emplee todos los medios legales para suspender la aplicación de esta insólita decisión judicial, para garantizar la libertad de expresión y la autoridad literaria y educativa. La justicia, penalizando así el arte de la palabra, nos devuelve a la Edad Media.»

Atenas, 17 de abril de 2008

Firmen la petición.

¡ Su voto cuenta !

Fuente: TLAXCALA - la red de traductores por la diversidad lingüística

Más sobre la traducción castellana de Zigzag entre naranjos amargos : Aquí y aquí.

Justice Minister Sotiris Hatzigakis intervened yesterday to ask for the review of a recent decision by a judge, which ordered school libraries to remove a critically acclaimed book from their shelves because it contained “disgusting and pornographic”passages.

Hatzigakis called the judge’s ruling to temporarily have Ersi Sotiropoulou’s “Zigzag Through the Bitter Orange Trees”removed from schools into question and has asked the Supreme Court to look into the decision as court of first instance justice Dimitris Gavalas is already the subject of a separate disciplinary process.

Gavalas faces being fired if the accusations that he has delayed issuing judgments in a series of cases are proved to be true.

Sotiropoulou’s novel, which won Greece’s State Award for Fiction in 2000, has been published in several languages, including English. It tells the story of a young girl dying from a rare disease who enlists the help of her brother to get revenge on a nurse at the hospital where she is being treated.

Gavalas’s ruling against the book came after lawyer Constantinos Plevris submitted a complaint about the novel, arguing that it was unsuitable for schools. The judge said in his ruling that the book is riddled with “obscene phrases” and that children’s literature should be aimed at “children’s pure souls.”

Plevris, the father of Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) MP Thanos Plevris, was last year found guilty of inciting racial hatred with his book “Jews: The Whole Truth.”

Kedros, the publishers of Sotiropoulou’s book, have described the campaign against the novel as a “witch hunt.”The author has also spoken out against the move to have her book banned from school libraries.

“I refuse to be called to account for my book,” she said recently. “The boundaries between literature and pornography are clear and easy to understand… but moralizing needs pornography, it is thirsty for so-called sin, because that is the only way that it can define itself.”
Hatzigakis has asked the Supreme Court’s vice president, Dimitris Kyritsakis, to handle the evaluation of the judge’s decision to request the book to be removed from schools.

Source: Kathimerini, English Edition, Monday 5 May 2008

The banning of the book risks becoming the central, tarnishing episode of Hatzigakis’ tenure at the ministry, and the Minister does not appear willing to take a passive position on the issue. “A judge cannot be allowed to politicize decisions in such fashion,” he said in a meeting with aides following the publication of the judge’s decision.

In a harshly-worded letter that Mr Hatzigakis is said to be preparing, the Minister is expected within a few days to ask the head of the judicial oversight body Dimitris Kiritsakis to open disciplinary hearings on the judge over the issue of the Sotiropoulou decision.

Read the original story at TA NEA (in Greek).

Ersi Sotiropoulos’s fifth novel, Zigzag through the Bitter-Orange Trees, was an enormous success on its publication in 2000 in Greece, becoming the first novel ever to win both the national prize for literature and the foremost book critics’ prize, awarded by Diavozo magazine.

Sotiropoulos’s work—which is made only more unsettling by the natural elegance of her prose—was perhaps never going to be an easy choice for a government ministry; her career has not been without controversy and this is not the first accusation of pornography she’s faced. The choice of Zigzag for the prize was subject to some criticism at the time from within the Ministry of Culture, but this did not keep the novel from outstanding critical success (“the best novel of the decade”) as well as translation into French, German, Spanish, and English.

But recently the novel has come under more vigorous attack. Kostas Plevris, a prominent member of the extreme right-wing political party Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), has filed a lawsuit denouncing the book: specifically, aiming to force the Ministry of Education, which each year donates copies of the national prizewinning books to libraries around the country, to withdraw all donated copies of Zigzag from schools. The courts have just granted an injunction in his favor—which will result in the book’s immediate removal, pending a final judgment—on the grounds that “A simple reading of this book shows that it includes passages that are clearly pornographic and obscene.”

Even that summary sounds too reasonable for the facts of the case. In December 2007, Plevris was given a 14-month suspended sentence for “inciting hatred and racial violence” in his book The Jews: The Whole Truth—his conviction the result a suit that has also, rightfully, been questioned as a possible infringement of free speech. The Jews: The Whole Truth is apparently (I’m relieved to say that it is not available in translation) a 1,400-page work of neo-Nazi thought and Holocaust denial, declaring among other things that Jews “deserve the firing squad” (See a typical summary here.) Plevris has recently written his own account of the trial, called The Struggle for Truth: The Adventures of a Book (“truth,” featured in both his titles, is clearly a central principle—perhaps he doth protest too much) and is now countersuing. The irony of his own subsequent attempts at censorship seems not to have occurred to him.

Plevris, in short, is certainly no critic of standing: quite the opposite. He seems to have found his ideal reader, however, in the judge ruling on this case, Dimitrios Gavalas. Gavalas justifies his ruling against Zigzag by reasoning that children’s literature should be addressed “to the pure souls of children, which Christ, God incarnate, offered as models to adults.” “School books should inspire children with moral purity and love for their religion and nation,” he continues, and then contemplates such questions as:

“Once most young people went to Church, in order to approach the truth, which is not ideology, or any other point of view, but truth, since the only light and life is Our Lord Jesus Christ; today young people end up in reformatories rotting from drug use. Is that progress?”

“Once the wife concerned herself primarily with child-rearing, which today is left to governesses and babysitters. Is that progress?”

“Once with a thousand drachmas you could buy all sorts of things, today with three euros what can you buy?”

Those of us who believe wholly in the importance of literature may be tempted to take Gavalas’s spectacular accusations as a compliment: what faith he must have in the power of literature, after all, to hold a single novel responsible for the downfall of a culture. But unfortunately, the absurdity of this case does not make its consequences any less dangerous. Books are in fact being removed from libraries—and that certainly is not progress. Please join protestors in Greece in an international petition against this injustice.

And we can’t help but add: Why not buy a copy to donate to your favorite library?

—Hilary Plum, with thanks to Karen Emmerich for her translations from the Greek

*Voir Michel Volkovitch, Présentation

Protest the recent ruling in Greece against Ersi Sotiropoulos’s Zigzag through the Bitter-Orange Trees. Click on the link below: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/restore-freedom-of-artistic-creation-and-education-greece.html

From the webpage of Intelink Publishing, Northampton, MA — publisher of the US edition of Zigzag through the Bitter-Orange Trees.

La Société réclame que le Ministère de l’Éducation condamne cette décision judiciaire qui ne connaît pas de précédent et d’utiliser tous les moyens légaux pour enrayer son application afin de sauvegarder la liberté d’expression et l’inviolabilité des arts et de l’éducation. Par cet acte, le système judiciaire, en pénalisant l’art de l’écriture, nous renvoie au Moyen Âge.

Cliquez ici pour signer la pétition !

Athens, 17 April 2008

Click here to sign the petition.