Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Europe and Asia
RUSSIA Russia’s largest publishing houses working in concert with the country’s libraries and book sellers formed an advisory union body earlier this month to address the increasingly repressive nature of laws centered around the subject matters of LGBTQ people and the war in Ukraine.
Making the task difficult is removal of materials from classic Russian literature in addition to contemporary works. Russian media outlet Vedomosti business daily reported that the Russian Book Union’s self-labeled expert center will issue recommendations on individual books, but leave the final decision to pull the books from sale up to the publishers.
According to Vedomosti, AST, one of Russia’s largest publishers, announced earlier this week that it would suspend sales of three books by U.S.
authors James Baldwin and Michael Cunningham, as well as the Russian postmodern writer Vladimir Sorokin, for allegedly containing “LGBTQ propaganda,” which is now outlawed in the country.
