The First Time I’ve Had a Book Censored

From Publishing Perspectives:

The move made by the French government against the novel Bien trop peitit (Far Too Small) in July 2023─that book being part of the 15-title Collection L’Ardeur─marked a rare decision in France. Not only was the government’s decree troubling for the national publishing community but it also had the unintended effect of helping to give the book new visibility in the marketplace.

Éditions Thierry Magnier is part of the Actes Sud publishing group, and Manu Causee’s novel Bien trop petit (Far Too Small) was published in September 2022 as part of the collection, described as mildly erotic literature for a young and informed audience. When released, the book was rated for ages 15 and 0lder. This was listed on the back cover, and the book was not a major success in bookstores until nine months later─when its sales were boosted by the controversy of interior minister Gérald Darmanin’s action.

Here is how the publisher’s sales text is written to describe the Collection L’Ardeur, literature neither considered nor intended by Éditions Magnier as pornography:

“Read, dare, fantasy─three words that sum up the ambition of the L’Ardeur collection. Since its beginnings, our house has been proud to defend courageous literature which is interested in adolescence as it is, with its gray areas, its excesses, its heightened emotions. But adolescence is also a period when the body metamorphoses, where sexual life begins. What could be more logical, then, than to open our catalog to texts which speak of sexuality, desire, fantasy?

“L’Ardeur resolutely places itself on the side of pleasure and the free and multiple exploration that our bodies offer us.”

Publisher Magnier uses the term traumatic when he describes the experience of having the book censored last summer.

“This is the first time I’ve had a book censored,” he says.

The Collection L’Ardeur, Magnier says, “was created for teenagers as a counterpoint to what emerged few years ago around ‘dark fiction.’ In France and abroad, ‘dark fiction’ was literature like Fifty Shades of Grey, in which women are objectified and men are stereotyped as rich with nice cars, and so on.

“We wanted to bring erotic literature to young people, without being educational, and to tell a different story from those you see on the Young Adult shelves,” Magnier says. And in the title that’s become so controversial, it’s youthful male sexuality that’s at issue.

Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives