LONDON: Bosnian author Lana Bastasic said she has cut ties with her German publishing house, S Fischer Verlag, due to its “systematic censorship” and failure to speak out on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The decision to terminate her contract was driven by her “moral and ethical” responsibility, she said on Instagram on Monday.
She criticized S Fischer Verlag for not taking a vocal stance on the situation in Gaza, labeling it a form of censorship against pro-Palestinian voices in Germany.
A spokesperson for the company confirmed Bastasic’s departure in December and said: “We respect her decision and are in constructive talks with her agency.”
The author took the step despite the German translation of her book, “Catch the Rabbit,” which won the 2020 EU prize for literature, helping to raise her profile.
Bastasic said her former publisher’s focus on antisemitism appeared “blind and deaf to the suffering of the Palestinian people in the same region.”
She also highlighted a contradiction on the publisher’s website, which emphasizes raising awareness about antisemitism while strongly denouncing antisemitic beliefs or behaviors after the attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
This was “politically irresponsible,” she said, as it equated every Jew with the Israeli government and contributed to a more dangerous world.
Bastasic said is was “intellectually lazy” to associate antisemitism with the Middle East while ignoring its presence in the political and cultural structures of Germany.
“I cannot, in good conscience, continue to be published by a house that blatantly fails German Jews while claiming to fight antisemitism,” she said, adding that Jewish artists, writers and scholars in Germany had been silenced since Oct. 7 and that some had lost their jobs or faced persecution for speaking out in support of Gaza.
Bastasic’s announcement comes amid a divisive climate in Germany, particularly in the cultural sector, which has been accused of suppressing freedom of expression, and specifically expressions of solidarity with Palestine.
In December, the Heinrich Boell Foundation withdrew its support for a literary prize awarded to Russian American journalist Masha Gessen after the author, in an essay, compared Gaza to Nazi-era Jewish ghettos.
