Gilbert withdraws Russian-set novel from publication

US author Elizabeth Gilbert is pulling her novel The Snow Forest from publication, in response to a backlash from Ukrainian readers unhappy about the book being set in Russia, reports the Guardian.

Bloomsbury was scheduled to publish the book in February 2024. The historical novel is set in Siberia, and follows a family of religious fundamentalists who lived isolated and undetected for 44 years after retreating from the world in the 1930s.

Gilbert released a statement on Instagram stating she was ‘removing the book from its publication schedule’, after she had ‘received an enormous, massive outpouring of reactions and responses from my Ukrainian readers expressing anger, sorrow, disappointment and pain about the fact that I would choose to release a book into the world right now, any book, no matter what the subject of it is, that is set in Russia’.

‘And I want to say that I have heard these messages and read these messages and I respect them,’ Gilbert said. ‘And as a result I’m making a course correction and I’m removing the book from its publication schedule. It is not the time for this book to be published. And I do not want to add any harm to a group of people who have already experienced and who are all continuing to experience grievous and extreme harm.’

In response, PEN America released a statement saying that, although ‘Gilbert’s decision in the face of online outcry from her Ukrainian readers is well-intended’, the ‘idea that, in wartime, creativity and artistic expression should be preemptively shut down to avoid somehow compounding harms caused by military aggression is wrongheaded’.

Category: International news