Can Books Be Dangerous?

I read a lot. The thrill of holding a new book in my hands that I have wanted to read is like waiting for the roller coaster ride to start its first descent. Sometimes, it's exhilarating. At other times, it's hugely disappointing.

I believe that life is too short to read bad books. There are so many great books out there, and whenever I come across something I don't enjoy - or struggle to get through - I give up and move on. At the moment, I'm reading Rushdie's "Joseph Anton", which I have written about in a couple of posts. I just received Alois Prinz's new biography on Hannah Arendt (yay!), and have on my bedside table Chinese Mo Yan's (nobel prize winner) "Red Sorghum" (brutal).

I just read in the newspaper that Turkey lifted a ban on 23,000 books, that had been in place for decades. The ban included some mundane Western comics, but also books by PKK leader Öcalan. In line with the Rushdie fatwa case: can these books be dangerous?

Libel, hate-speak, denials of holocausts etc have been and continue to be banned in many places. The line between freedom of speech and incitement of violence or insult can be a thin one, and placed in different spots by different parties and individuals.

Just a while back, I was reading a book review on a current bestseller novel called "Er ist wider da" (He's here again), which is about Hitler re-emerging with amnesia of the past 65 years in our current day, and eventually rising back to power due to public parody and media hype. The reviewer criticized the author of "being naive about his readership", implying that the book may be read as right-wing neo-fascist propaganda.

Food for thought.