The Kuwaiti authorities have censored almost a thousand books at the literary festival held in that country, including Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky's classic The Brothers Karamazov.
"The Brothers Karamazov" is a work from 1880 that depicts Russia in the 19th century and raises questions about morality, free will and the existence of God.
All books that will be exhibited at the festival have been reviewed in advance by the censorship commission, as stipulated by Kuwaiti law. The law targets insults to Islam and the judiciary, threats to national security, "calling for disorder" and "immoral" acts.
Dostoevsky thus joined the growing list of writers whose works are banned in Kuwait, a country considered moderate in the Persian Gulf, but where the conservative current is increasingly strong in political and social life.
In the last five years, the Ministry of Information has banned more than 4.000 books, including "The Bell Ringer of the Church of the Virgin Mary" by Victor Hugo and "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez.
Activists protested in the streets twice in September against increasing censorship. From the seventies to the nineties, Kuwait was a publishing center, with the cultural magazine "al-Arabi", widely read in Arab countries, and a series of popular science, fiction and other books.
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