An international book festival in Dubai is facing the possibility of a mass walkout in its inaugural year with authors queuing up to protest the censorship of a book that discusses homosexuality.
Canadian novelist and former Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood sparked the controversy by pulling out ofthe Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature after a fellow writer was blacklisted for offending "cultural sensitivities".
The book at the centre of the storm is The Gulf Between Us, a romantic comedy by British writer Geraldine Bedell which is set in a fictional Gulf emirate. It was due to be launched at the festival but has been withdrawn at the last minute because it features a gay relationship.
"Can you have a literary festival and ban books because they feature gay characters? Is that what being part of the contemporary literary scene means?" Bedell said. "The organisers claim to be looking for an exchange of ideas - but not, apparently, about sex or faith. That doesn't leave literature an awful lot of scope."
Festival director Isobel Abulhoul said: "I knew that her work could offend certain cultural sensitivities. I did not believe that it was in the festival's long-term interests to acquiesce to her publisher's request to launch the book at the first festival of this nature in the Middle East."
Atwood, a vice-president of the writers' group International PEN, has infuriated organisers of the literary festival by posting a letter of protest on her website.
"I was greatly looking forward to the festival," the letter reads, "and to the chance to meet readers there but, as an international vice-president of PEN - an organisation concerned with the censorship of writers - I cannot be part of the festival this year."
Her boycott was reinforced with protests from other writers threatening to pull out.
