Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Eleven Thousand Rods in 1999

SOME EUROPEAN SYMBOLISM IN TURKEY

If yesterday marked the 21st anniversary of the fatwa issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini on Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, Tuesday saw the European Court of Human Rights defend a convicted Turkish publisher for publishing Guillaume Apollinaire’s classic erotic novel, The Eleven Thousand Rods in 1999.

Contraband in Turkey, the novel was banned in France till 1970 for it’s story of an aristocrat on a turn-of-the-century lust-filled road trip. Luckily, since Apollinaire died in 1918, no one has called for his death.

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