īanned under Videla's regime during Argentina's last- civil military dictatorship (1976–1983). The historical film is about the suppression of a peasants' revolt, known as " Tragic Patagonia". īanned under Isabel Perón's government (1974–1976) and Jorge Rafael Videla's regime during Argentina's last-civil military dictatorship (1976–1983). īanned during the self-styled " Argentine Revolution" dictatorship (1966–1973), for being "pornographic". īanned during the conservative period of authoritarian governments known as " Infamous Decade" (1930–1943), for lampooning Nazi Germany Argentina had declared itself neutral during World War Two. Due to the Arab League boycott of Israel, it is also banned in Qatar and Tunisia. Lebanon and Israel are also in a state of war. Pulled from distribution in Lebanon before premiere on account of the film's lead star Gal Gadot's service in the Israeli Army, leading to a campaign against her and in accordance with a decades-old law that boycotts Israeli products and bars Lebanese citizens from traveling to Israel or having contacts with Israelis. īanned in the United Arab Republic due to actor Paul Newman's "material support for Zionism and Israel". īanned from all Arab League states because actress Haya Harareet was Israeli. īanned for ten years under Communist government. One cannot write about poverty, beggars, sex, rape, and, of course, politics or anything positive about other countries.During the five-year reign of the Islamic Emirate government in Afghanistan, watching film or television was prohibited. Many authors write about the supernatural to escape from censorship because so many things are prohibited, both explicitly and by unwritten rules. As the situation inside the country gets more and more dire, people grasp for quick desperate solutions, they want to believe in some kind of hope, anything.
Q: Why do spirits and superstition loom so large in your book, and other accounts of life in Myanmar?Ī: Myanmar is largely pre-modern and such beliefs are very traditional. But I do have a popular following and somehow manage to make a living. They even say an American should not have translated it. There are other writers with more government leanings, who definitely do no like the fact that I was translated and nominated for an international prize. Most writers are experts at hidden meanings.
Risk largely comes from writing open provocation. Q: But you feel secure, as a writer, despite this?Ī: I feel perfectly safe, because I am not political. But there are very few translators and no connections to foreign publishers. There are many writers, and even more unpublished manuscripts. I wanted to see Myanmar writers and Myanmar bookshelves in international bookstores. No one knows the tears I shed there at Blackwell’s. It was the only book from Myanmar - on the Thailand bookshelf - they didn’t even have a Burma bookshelf. Is this a milestone?Ī: When I was at Oxford in 1998, I saw Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s “Letters from Burma” at Blackwell’s bookstore. Q: “Smile as They Bow” is the first book by a writer living in Myanmar to be translated into English. She spoke to Reuters after the publication of the English translation of her novel, a gritty portrayal of the raucous week-long Taungbyon festival, which celebrates spirits known as “nats” who are believed to shower luck on people they favor. Yi, whose book “Smile as They Bow” was nominated for the Asian Booker prize last year, is determined to help create a canon of Burmese literature that will fill its own shelves at English-language bookshops, and not be filed under Thailand. Now, she wants other Myanmar writers to follow her. BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - Nu Nu Yi, the first author living in army-ruled Myanmar to have a book published outside the country, battled censors for more than a decade to get her voice heard.