This latest woke assault to common sense and freedom of expression might just be turning against those who launched it.
"Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed," tweeted American-British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie in response to chief executive officer of free expression group PEN America Suzanne Nossel, who said the group is "alarmed" at hundred of changes to venerated works by Roald Dahl "in a purported effort to scrub the books of that which might offend someone."
As the Daily Telegraph first reported, "language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race has been cut and rewritten." For instance, the word "fat" has been cut from every new edition of relevant books, while the word "ugly" has also been culled. As a result, Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now described as "enormous" (instead of "enormously fat"), while in The Twits, Mrs. Twit is no longer "ugly and beastly" but just "beastly." In addition to numerous changes made to the original text, some passages not written by Dahl have been added. In The Witches, a passage explaining that witches in the book are bald beneath their wigs now includes a line that reads: "There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that." [...]
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