‘Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship’: Stabbed Salman Rushdie leads backlash against ‘woke’ publishing censors who are rewriting author’s classic books to remove all ‘offensive’ language
- Salman Rushdie, 75, said the changes to Dahl’s works were ‘absolute censorship’
- Read more: Roald Dahl’s books REWRITTEN to remove offensive language
Sir Salman Rushdie has led an angry backlash over publishers for making woke changes to the classic children’s books by Roald Dahl.
The 75-year-old award-winning author, who was recently stabbed, losing the sight in one eye, for protecting free speech and ‘attacking Islam’, said the changes were ‘absolute censorship’.
The intervention comes as hundreds of changes have been made to the beloved children’s books, including no longer referring to Augustus Gloop as ‘fat’.
Other characters have had their genders changed and words like ‘mad’ and crazy’ have been removed by sensitivity readers.
Critics said prohibitions on the use of offensive language stop writers portraying the world as it really is, with some saying they will hoard original copies of Dahl’s works for their own children.
The award-winning author Salman Rushdie, who was recently stabbed for protecting free speech and ‘attacking Islam’, said the changes were ‘absolute censorship’
Rushdie, who has been a prominent advocate for free speech for several decades, said the publishers responsible for the changes should be ashamed of themselves
Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie led the critics who reacted angrily to the rewriting of Dahl’s words.
Rushdie lived in hiding for years after Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 issued a fatwa calling for his death because of the alleged blasphemy in his novel The Satanic Verses.
He was attacked and seriously injured last year at an event in New York state.
‘Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship,’ Rushdie wrote on Twitter.
‘Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.’
PEN America, a community of some 7,500 writers that advocates for freedom of expression, said it was ‘alarmed’ by reports of the changes to Dahl’s books.
‘If we start down the path of trying to correct for perceived slights instead of allowing readers to receive and react to books as written, we risk distorting the work of great authors and clouding the essential lens that literature offers on society,’ tweeted Suzanne Nossel, chief executive of PEN America.
Laura Hackett, a childhood Dahl fan who is now deputy literary editor of London’s Sunday Times newspaper, had a more personal reaction to the news.
‘The editors at Puffin should be ashamed of the botched surgery they’ve carried out on some of the finest children’s literature in Britain,’ she wrote.
‘As for me, I’ll be carefully stowing away my old, original copies of Dahl’s stories, so that one day my children can enjoy them in their full, nasty, colorful glory.’
Dahl died in 1990 at the age of 74. His books, which have sold more than 300 million copies, have been translated into 68 languages and continue to be read by children around the world (file image)
Hundreds of changes were made to the original texts, extinguishing Dahl’s colourful and memorable descriptions to make his characters less grotesque (file image)
The changes to Dahl’s books mark the latest skirmish in a debate over cultural sensitivity as campaigners seek to protect young people from cultural, ethnic and gender stereotypes in literature and other media.
The changes have been criticised by many authors, who say that restricting wildly-used language risks prohibiting writers from portraying the world as it really is.
Hundreds of changes were made to the original texts, extinguishing Dahl’s colourful and memorable descriptions, some over fifty years old, to make his characters less grotesque.
Some of the changes include alterations to well-known classic works by the author, including Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Matilda.
Augustus Gloop in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory can now only be described as ‘enormous’.
Mrs Twit’s ‘fearful ugliness’ has been chopped to ‘ugliness’ and Mrs Hoppy in Esio Trot is not an ‘attractive middle-aged lady’ but a ‘kind middle-aged lady’.
Gender is also eliminated with books no longer referring to ‘female’ characters.
Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a ‘most formidable female’, is now a ‘most formidable woman’, while her ‘great horsey face’ is now called ‘her face’.
Oompa-Loompas who were once ‘small men’ are now ‘small people’ and Fantastic Mr Fox’s three sons have become daughters.
The word ‘fat’ has been wiped from every one of Dahl’s books, with Augustus Gloop only described as ‘enormous’
Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a ‘most formidable female’, is now a ‘most formidable woman’
Dahl is one of the most successful children’s authors ever, with 250 million copies of his books sold
Passages not written by the late author, who died in 1990, have also been added by the publisher to complete their new editions.
In The Witches, a paragraph describing them as bald under their wigs is followed shortly by a new line: ‘There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.’
A witch posing as a ‘cashier in a supermarket’ now works as a ‘top scientist’ and Matilda reads Jane Austen instead of Rudyard Kipling.
Mental health was another focal point for sensitivity readers with the words ‘crazy’ and ‘mad’, which Dahl used in a comic fashion, removed from his books.
The Roald Dahl Story Company, which controls the rights to the books, said it worked with Puffin to review the texts because it wanted to ensure that: ‘Dahl’s wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today.’
The language was reviewed in partnership with Inclusive Minds, a collective which is working to make children’s literature more inclusive and accessible.
Any changes were ‘small and carefully considered,’ the company said.
It said the analysis started in 2020, before Netflix bought the Roald Dahl Story Company and embarked on plans to produce a new generation of films based on the author’s books.
‘When publishing new print runs of books written years ago, it’s not unusual to review the language used alongside updating other details, including a book’s cover and page layout,’ the company said.
‘Our guiding principle throughout has been to maintain the storylines, characters, and the irreverence and sharp-edged spirit of the original text.’
Puffin didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Dahl died in 1990 at the age of 74. His books, which have sold more than 300 million copies, have been translated into 68 languages and continue to be read by children around the world.
But he is also a controversial figure who made antisemitic comments throughout his life.
The Dahl family apologised in 2020, saying it recognised the ‘lasting and understandable hurt caused by Roald Dahl’s antisemitic statements’.
Regardless of his personal failings, fans of Dahl’s books celebrate his use of sometimes dark language that taps into the fears of children, as well as their sense of fun.
Authors and publishers warn ‘sensitivity readers’ are destroying books
Writers have warned against the dangers of ‘sensitivity readers’ who edit or remove language in books they deem to be offensive.
Such readers review manuscripts before publication to raise concerns about language they consider unacceptable.
Authors and publishers have said the practice risks destroying the art of writing through overzealous censorship, The Times reported.
Writing Diversely is an agency which provides sensitivity readers, where one such reader identifies as a ‘disabled nonbinary Jewish queer person with ADHD’.
Another sensitivity reader describes themselves as a ‘bisexual genderfluid lightskinned brown Mexican, self-diagnosed autistic as well as with EDS [ehlers danlos syndrome], depression and anxiety.
One case of so-called sensitivity reading involved the award-winning author Kate Clanchy being told she could not call the Taliban ‘terrorists’ because they now control the Afghan government.
Author Anthony Horowitz was made the remove the word ‘scalpel’ from a book for fear it could offend Native Americans as it closely resembled the word ‘scalp’.
This was despite the fact the word originates from the Latin ‘scalpellum’ which means a surgical knife.
A fiction writer described how a publisher requested his book be sent to sensitivity readers because a character was disabled, even though the author has the same disability.
Kate Clanchy was asked to send her Orwell Prize-winning book ‘Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me’ to sensitivity readers after some social media users claimed descriptions in it were racist.
When the book was returned with hundreds of suggested changes, she left her publisher, Picador.
The author then joined independent publisher Swift Press which re-printed her original book.
Clanchy said: ‘The trouble is authors are now self-censoring their work even before it is shown to these people.
‘We already have fact-checkers, so I don’t see why we need sensitivity readers. They are thought-checkers.’
Mark Richards, co-founder of Swift Press, said: ‘I wish these books would be taken on by mainstream publishers, but the industry has lost its backbone over the last five years.
‘Publishers do not want to be caught in Twitter storms so they hire sensitivity readers as insurance.’
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