Saša Filipienka, Irvin Welsh, Hunter S. Thompson among books banned by censors in Belarus

September 30, Pozirk. The Ministry of Information’s censorship commission has added 32 titles to the list of banned books, including Elephant and Red Cross by popular exiled Belarusian writer Saša Filipienka, nearly all books by Irvin Welsh and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

After the 2020 political unrest in Belarus, Filipienka has become a voice of the Belarusian protest movement in Europe, where he resides. He has advocated for Belarusian political prisoners in the Russian, German, English, Swedish, Dutch, Polish and French press. The writer supports Ukraine in its fight against Russian invasion.

The list now also features the children’s bestseller Duck, Death and the Tulip by German author Wolf Erlbruch, as well as The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business, written in collaboration with Werner Holzwarth.

In 2017, Erlbruch won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, one of the most prestigious in children’s literature. He also received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for outstanding contribution to children’s literature.

Books by Irvine Welsh, a Scottish writer known for his raw, blunt style and Edinburgh working-class dialect, explore the dark sides of life, such as drugs, violence, sex and the social problems of modern youth.

Welsh’s blacklisted 1993 cult novel Trainspotting, which follows the lives of a group of heroin-addicted friends in Edinburgh, was on the BBC’s 2003 “Big Read” list of the UK’s top 200 novels. Welsh is reportedly planning to publish a sequel soon.

The Ministry of Information noted that officials have the right to revoke the certificate of state registration from any distributor found to be spreading the blacklisted books.

Belarus has banned 173 books so far.

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