Censorship in Iran Publishing

“Figures from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance show that the country has some 7,000 publishing firms. Take just two of these companies – one of them says it has about 70 novels and short story collections currently pending approval from the censors. The other says it has had between 50 and 70 books awaiting review at any one time for the past two years.

“Censors…go through already published works as well as the never-ending flow of new ones, checking line by line to see whether they were compatible with the “core Islamic values” the new administration wanted to assert.

“In practice, though, the censors only look at literature, books on art, and works on literary criticism and theory, which account for about 40 per cent of all books published in Iran.”

Books Stuck in Iran’s Censorship Quagmire
By Omid Nikfarjam; source: Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)