Banned Saudi novel
YA says he knew his book would be banned in Saudi Arabia: We have a taboo against writing about religion and politics and sex and I wrote about all of those things. (What does it mean to you to have this book banned in Saudi Arabia?) To be honest, something different is going on in my country. there’s many things that have changed in our society and the country is opening up. I think our society is changing but slowly. I don’t worry about that because I have read about censorship in America and censorship of Ginsburg so this has happened everywhere. Maybe our Beat Generation is occurring now. (Clearly you’re excited about what’s going on there in your country. what is it that inspires you?) In the past, we worried about censorship so everyone self-censored and now that’s changing. (So this is a good time to be a writer there?) Yes, one friend, a Lebanese poet tried to convince me to stay and I think maybe I need to write about those matters.
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