To update you on the several banned-unbanned book sagas ongoing in Malaysia at the moment, so to keep you up to date ...
First, the High Court has adjourned to Feb 12 the decision on the application by author K. Arumugam seeking to declare null and void the government’s decision to ban his book on the Kampung Medan.
Secondly, I reported that Barry Wain's book Malaysian Maverick : Mahathir Mohammad in Turbulent Times is banned. It seems I was premature, the book is still being studied by Ministry officials. (There's an interesting article about it here in The Sydney Morning Herald.)
Meanwhile the book is flying off the shelves in Singapore and according to industry sources there are also several hundred copies already for sale inside the country (if you know where to look - which isn't in the bigger bookshop chains) so I don't reckon that anyone who want to reads the book is going to go without. But I do feel very sorry for the supplier whose copies remain are in limbo ... I am sure that the government is not going to compensate them for losses.
I reported on Sister's in Islam victory the other day, but I have since heard (via Twitter) that the government intends to appeal the High Court's decision - though I have not seen this reported in the press.
Will keep you informed in all these cases.
3 comments:
Wow. How do you keep in touch with the list of books that have been banned?
it's all in the papers and i just notice it.
Isn't that good for publicity then? no one should be against it because it will increase sales. If the government had just ignored it, it might have died an ignoble death. However, they chose to give them free publicity by banning it. They have successfully trolled the government for profit.
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