Banned and local

It’s marvellous to see that Auckland's libraries are joining similar institutions in other parts of the world in marking Banned Books Week. Here in Ranui library this morning I’ve looked over a nicely presented table, which features books in blank brown wrapping and helpful explanatory notes. 

I’ve learned, to my amazement and sadness, that Harry Potter has been booted from many US school libraries, on account of his alleged Satanism, and that Anne Frank’s diary is banned from Lebanon, on the grounds that it might create sympathy for Jews. There are several books banned in the former Soviet Union on the table too. Visitors to the library and invited to remove the brown wrappers from the books, and read them.

I am disappointed, though, that the display doesn’t feature any of the numerous books that have been banned in New Zealand over the years. A famous example of our own banned literature is Jean Devanny’s The Butcher Shop, an alternately coruscating and titillating depiction of life and lust on a New Zealand farm that was removed from shelves in the ’20s on account of its author’s communist views, and her characters’ enjoyment of extramarital sex.

Censorship is not just something that happens in distant, benighted lands.