Saturday, August 15, 2015

Anne Rice hits out at 'internet lynch mobs' attacking controversial books

Interview With the Vampire author says attempts to ‘take down’ Kate Breslin’s concentration camp romance with bad Amazon reviews amount to censorship

‘I abhor censorship in all forms’ ... Anne Rice.
‘I abhor censorship in all forms’ ... Anne Rice. Photograph: Dan Tuffs/Getty Images
The bestselling novelist Anne Rice, author of Interview With the Vampire, has said that she believes “we are facing a new era of censorship, in the name of political correctness”, in the wake of the heavy online criticism that has been directed at Kate Breslin’s romance novel For Such a Time.

Rice hit out at what she called an “internet lynch mob” that has descended upon Breslin in the last week. The novel, which had been shortlisted for prizes in the Romance Writers of America’s annual awards, imagines a relationship between a Jewish woman in a concentration camp and an SS Kommandant, and her eventual conversion to Christianity. Critics called it “deeply offensive and insensitive”, as well as “antisemitic, violent, and dangerous”, with the widespread online debate prompting the appearance of dozens of one-star reviews of the novel on Amazon.
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