Novelist breaks with German publisher amid call for wider cultural boycott over Gaza

Lana Bastašić terminates contract, decrying ‘censorship’ of pro-Palestinian voices in Germany

A prize-winning Bosnian and Serbian novelist has cut ties with her German publisher in protest against what she describes as its silence on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as a call for an all-out boycott of German cultural institutions over the government’s pro-Israel stance divides opinion.

Lana Bastašić, 37, who won the 2020 EU prize for literature for her debut novel, Catch the Rabbit, posted on Instagram on Monday that it had been her “moral and ethical duty to terminate my contracts” with the publishing house S Fischer, citing its failure “to be vocal about the ongoing genocide happening in Gaza”, as well as the “censorship” of pro-Palestinian voices in Germany.