Book News

Three employees at the Kerala office of India's Censor Board were arrested in connection with the piracy of recent Malayalam blockbuster movie Premam .

Earlier, the anti piracy cell of the state police had found that the pirated copy of the movie uploaded on the internet had carried the water mark censor copy. This made the police suspect the involvement of staff at the Censor Board. Police had raided the censor board office and found that a section of staff used to take out copies of films submitted for censoring.

An Adelaide bookshop owner has been gently raided by police for selling copies of the cult novel, American Psycho that were not plastic-wrapped.

The novel, by American author Bret Easton Ellis, has been classified R18 by book censors since its release in 1991, requiring it to be sold in plastic and only to those aged over 18.

It is a satirical book depicting a psychotic high-flying Wall Street worker in an era of greedy America and includes a number of very violent and graphically shocking passages.

Imprints Booksellers co-owner Jason Lake said previous editions had always been plastic-wrapped but the most recent edition was a Picador Classic with an introduction by famous Scottish author, Irvine Welsh, and it did not come plastic-wrapped. He said:

We just assumed the classification has been lifted.

It's the only book on our shelf that we ever have with a plastic wrapper.

Lake said the police were very gentle when they arrived and asked that the book be removed from the shelf. He said the raid occurred because somebody complained to police after reading in a weekend newspaper column that the book was being sold by bookshops without plastic wrapping.

English PEN has announced the publication of Draw The Line Here , a collection of cartoons drawn in response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January 2015.

The book is a collaboration between the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation (PCO), Crowdshed, and English PEN. It features cartoons drawn by British artists in the days immediately after the attacks. The work of 66 cartoonists is featured, including Steve Bell, Dave Brown, Martin Rowson, Peter Brookes and Ralph Steadman. The book features a Foreword by Libby Purves and an introduction by Robert Sharp of English PEN.

Two themes appear repeatedly in the cartoons. The first is the black balaclava of the terrorist - a menacing yet somehow compelling image. Whether it is Jihadi John in Syria or the Paris gunmen, the masked face of the assassin has already become shorthand for murderous intolerance.

The second theme is that of a writing implement as a weapon. Pencils that counter the gun barrel, or pens held aloft like a crusader's sword. Such images are a form of wish fulfilment - if only a pen or a brush could really stop bullets.

The profits from Draw the Line Here will be shared between the Charlie Hebdo victims' fund and English PEN's free speech campaigns for embattled writers and artists around the world. Perhaps the most pleasing aspect to this book, therefore, is that the contributors have used their own freedom of expression to defend the free speech rights of others. It is a positive and creative response to a moment of destruction, and should give us cause for hope.