guardian: 'Sickening' paedophilia books rock French literary world
Child protection groups have begun pressuring the publishers of two French works of fiction - Rose Bonbon, by Nicolas Jones-Gorlin, and Il Entrerait dans la Légende, by Louis Skorecki - which include as characters an obsessive pedophile and a serial killer who preys on young girls. Rose Bonbon has been withdrawn from sale by the publishers after complaints from the childrens rights grou L'Enfant bleu. The group says they will fight Skorecki's publisher in court if necessary.
Child protection groups and a number of critics, including Alexis Liebaert, from the news magazine Marianne, who called the books 'sickening, unacceptable, pornographic and above all entirely devoid of literary merit', say the novels are dangerous and offensive and deliberately set out to court scandal to improve sales. The respected publishing house of Gallimard has decided not to re-supply bookshops with one of the works, Rose Bonbon by Nicolas Jones-Gorlin, after a children's rights group, L'Enfant bleu, said it risked 'shocking both public opinion and victims of paedophilia'. [...] L'Enfant bleu and another children's rights association, La Fondation pour l'Enfance, are still reading the book, which was published last week, and have said they will not hesitate to go to court to ban it in an attempt to 'ring the alarm bell as loudly as possible so that this kind of literature does not prosper'. (see www.guardian.co.uk)