16 January 2024
Bosnian prize-winning novelist Lana Bastašić said Monday that she terminated her contract with a German publisher in protest of its silence on the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, reports Anadolu Agency.
“I feel that it is my moral and ethical duty to terminate my contract with S. Fischer. Not only has the publisher failed to be vocal about the ongoing genocide happening in Gaza but they have also kept quiet on the systematic censorship happening in Germany for the last two months,” Bastašić, 37, who won the 2020 EU prize for literature for her debut novel, Catch the Rabbit, said on Instagram.
She said cutting ties as an all-out boycott of German cultural institutions over the government’s pro-Israel stance divides opinion.
“Enough Germans have told me not to publish this statement so the only reasonable thing to do is to publish the statement. Don’t take the money, kids,” said Bastasic.
“The S. Fischer Verlag, founded in 1886 by Samuel Fischer and driven into exile by the National Socialists in 1936, faces the responsibility that arises from this legacy. We deal journalistically with the acts of National Socialism and would like to use our books to shed light on the continuities of anti-Semitism. We oppose the new anti-Semitic and racist thinking and actions. This is particularly true after the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023,” the publisher said on the main page of its website.
“It is morally questionable because it seems blind and deaf to the suffering of the Palestinian people in the same region,” Bastašić wrote, referring to the publisher’s stated concern about antisemitism.
Many people are posting and sending messages to Bastasic to show support for her decision on social media.
