threats to authors

We are all familiar with Barthes' concept of the death of the author,an abstract concept, and have indeed seen more of this than abtractions, with physical deaths resulting from writing and publishing books throughout history. Such is the power of books. We have seen the results for Salmon Rushdie in relation to a book that he wrote. Now, we have the case of Roberto Saviano. Late last year thousands of people, wearing Spartaus-type T-shirts emblazoned with 'Io sono Saviano' (I am Saviano), protested across Italy in support of this author, who is under very real threat of death, but not from any religious or ideological source. The source for him is the Mafia, for as he says, 'To set oneself against the clans becomes a war of survival'. What has he done? He has written a book called 'Gomorrah: Italy's Other Mafia'. I read an article on this by Susan Chenery (2009, April 4-5. Roberto's war. The Australian, The Weekend Australian Magazine pp. 26-31). Perhaps the most telling point is what Saviano himself points out, that 'his book has a life of its own out there in the world. The Camorra can't kill a book'. He lives in hiding, as a prisoner who has committed no crime that we would recognise, and the personal toll of this is enormous. In these days of digital text production, it seems that the power of the book remains undiminished.

Add a Comment

This weblog implements rel="nofollow" in comment links, thus links in comments will not be indexed by Google, MSN, Yahoo! etc.

From	CGPublisher User Email Address Password Anonymous Author Email Address Homepage Spam Bot Prevention: What is 2 + 2?
Comment
	Tags allowed: b, a, i, br, pre, p, ul, ol and li.

Please note that required fields in this form are highlighted. Other fields are optional.