IRAN: Dozens of literary masterpieces and international best-sellers have been banned in Iran in a dramatic rise in censorship that has plunged the country's publishing industry into crisis.
Companies that once specialised in popular fiction and other money-spinners are being restricted to academic texts under a cultural freeze instigated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Several thousand new and previously published works have been blacklisted by Iran's culture and Islamic guidance ministry, which vets all books.
Newly banned books include Farsi translations of Tracy Chevalier's bestseller Girl With a Pearl Earring and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, the latter for upsetting clerics within Iran's tiny Christian community. Chevalier's novel has completed six print-runs in Iran and earned hefty profits for its local publisher, Cheshme.
Another publishing house has been banned from selling a successful series of books featuring lyrics by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Black Sabbath, Queen and Guns n' Roses. Stores were told to remove the books or face closure.
The crackdown also covers classics, such as William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and scores of works by Iranian authors.
Some bans are being imposed under fresh rules requiring renewed permits for previously published works. Crisis talks between Iran's publishing union and the culture ministry have failed to ease the situation. "We have books on psychology, history, politics and folklore which have been sitting for nine months and still no answer," a senior executive with Cheshme said.
The clampdown has been headed by the hardline culture minister, Mohammed Hossein Saffar Harandi, a former revolutionary guard and close ally of Mr Ahmadinejad. It follows a relative thaw during the eight-year presidency of Mr Ahmadinejad's reformist predecessor, Mohammed Khatami.
One publisher said: "Culture ministry officials told us that during the reformist period the government went to excess and permitted books which ruined the atmosphere." Opening Iran's national book week festival this week, Mr Saffar Harandi said a tougher line was needed to stop publishers from serving a "poisoned dish to the young generation".
"We have complaints against those who see books as only a market and are acting as assistants for evil," he said. "Sometimes the humiliation of Iranian youth is implied or suggested in the books."
Mohammed Ali Jafarieh, head of the Sales publishing house, said: "We had adapted to the previous policy but now that is annulled and they are imposing their own personal taste." - (Guardian service)