Bosnian author Lana Bastasic disinvited from Austria literature festival over Gaza views
Bosnian author Lana Bastasic, who earlier this month cut ties with her German publisher over its "silence on Gaza", has been disinvited from a literature festival in Austria, the writer announced on Instagram on Tuesday.
Bastasic received an email from organisers saying that they have been closely following the discussion surrounding her decision to leave the S. Fischer publishing house.
The email states: “As much as we appreciate your books, under the given circumstances, we unfortunately must withdraw our invitation.
"Your stay at Literaturhaus NO and participation in the Literature Festival Salzburg would inevitably imply a positioning on our part that we do not wish for...”
Earlier this month, Bastasic said it was her moral and ethical duty to end her contract with the publisher over its silence on Israel’s war on Gaza, as well as the culture of "systematic censorship" in Germany.
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The author of the novel Catch the Rabbit, winner of the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature, accused her publisher of having double standards, and believed that its stated concern over antisemitism was "deaf to the suffering of Palestinians".
'Given that you invited me to your residency and festival, you must have been acquainted with my work, which deals closely with the consequences war has on children'
- Lana Bastasic, Bosnian author
In response to her invitation being withdrawn, Bastasic said that the decision was an example of “clear positioning” and that it was her “political and human opinion that children should not be bombed and that German cultural institutions should know better when it comes to genocide.
“Given that you invited me to your residency and festival, you must have been acquainted with my work, which deals closely with the consequences war has on children. Perhaps to you literary works are divorced from real life, but then again, you have probably never known war first hand,” she added.
Bastasic thanked the organisation for rescinding its invitation, saying that she does not want to be part of another institution “which not only cancels artists because of their activism, but seems to think silence and censorship is the right answer to genocide”.
Following her split with her publisher this month, the author told Middle East Eye that her decision led to significant financial loss and uncertainty, but she would not shift from her position.
Bastasic said that cutting ties with her publisher would likely mean no more readings, book fairs and other opportunities, which is how writers make a living.
“I didn’t start writing because I wanted to have a career. I started writing because I come from a traumatised place and I had the need to communicate something,” she told Middle East Eye in a previous interview.
Parallels to Bosnia genocide
Bastasic’s decision was partially shaped by her personal experience. Her ancestors left Croatia due to persecution in the 1940s, relocating in the north of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In Bosnia, Muslims were vilified and persecuted by Serbs, with buildings razed and people killed on a mass scale.
She says there are plenty of parallels with her experiences of war and what is happening in Gaza.
In an article in The Guardian in October, she said that Israel’s carpet bombing and collective punishment of civilians and children in Gaza has plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis, yet any mention of this in Germany is labelled as antisemitism.
“Any attempt at providing context and sharing facts on the historical background to the conflict is seen as crude justification of Hamas’s terror,” she wrote, adding that marches for Palestine have been stopped, Palestinian symbols banned, and Jews showing solidarity with Palestinians silenced.
At least 26,700 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza since 7 October, following a Hamas-led attack on Israel which left at least 1,140 people dead.
Israel has since unleashed a fierce bombing campaign on the besieged enclave and cut off all electricity, aid, fuel and water to the Strip, creating a humanitarian disaster.
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