AST Publishing House released a biography of Pasolini, painting several pages black

AST Publishing House censored Roberto Carnero’s book “Pasolini. To Die for Ideas,” which tells the biography of the Italian director and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini. The book contains black lines on several dozen pages. Journalist Ivan Davydov was one of the first to draw attention to this.

A photograph of a page of the book, almost completely retouched in black, was published by the Gorky publication, which published a review of the book (painting most of its publication black).

According to the telegram channel “Caution, News,” which studied the published biography, approximately one-fifth of the work was censored. Selected sentences were painted black, including biographical details, interview excerpts, and footnotes. At some points, several pages in a row were painted over.

As the telegram channel notes, the topic of sexuality and personal relationships of Pasolini, who was openly gay, was almost completely removed from the book. Poems were also censored, for example, from “Pleas to My Mother” the lines “I don’t know how to be alone” were removed. I am obsessed with bodies with soulless, blind lust.”

The AST website reports that “the text of the book was shortened in connection with Federal Law 478.” This law, passed in December 2022, introduced a complete ban on the “propaganda of non-traditional relationships” and pedophilia, the dissemination of information about LGBT and “sex change” among people of any age.

Russian publishing houses have repeatedly resorted to censorship and retouched lines in published books. Thus, the publishing house LikeBook (part of Eksmo) painted over the descriptions of sex between two men in Max Falk’s book “Shattered.” Alpina Publisher censored publicist Mark Manson’s book Everything Is Sucks. The publishing house “White Crow” removed several pages from the book “Hello, menstruation!” by Yumi Stines and Melissa Kang.

Publishing house AST this week, within three days, withdrew from sale at least six books that contained signs of “LGBT propaganda and gender reassignment.” In particular, the books Heritage by Vladimir Sorokin and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara were banned.

How Russian authorities are trying to ban books by unwanted authors – in the podcast “What Happened”