As she was awarded the Freedom To Publish award at The British Book Awards, best-selling author Margaret Atwood shared her fears about the current political polarisation.
In a video acceptance speech, The Handmaid's Tale author said: "I cannot remember a time during my own life, when words themselves felt under such threat. Political and religious polarisation, which appeared to be on the wane for parts of the 20th century, has increased alarmingly in the past decade. The world feels to me more like the 1930s and 40s at present than it has in the intervening 80 years.
"I have worked as a writer and in my youth in small press publishing for 60 odd years. Those years included the Soviet Union, when Samizdat was a dangerous method of publishing. Hand-produced manuscripts were secretly circulated, and bad luck for you if you were caught. [They now include] the recent spate of censorship and book banning, not only in the oppressive countries around the world, but also in the United States. [They also include] the attempt to expel from universities anyone who disagrees with the dogmas of their would-be controllers.
"This kind of sentiment is not confined to one extremism or the other - the so called left or the so called right. All extremisms share the desire to erase their opponents, to stifle any creative expression that is not propaganda for themselves, and to shut down dialogue. They don’t want a dialogue, they want a monologue. They don’t want many voices, they want only one.”
Closing her speech, Atwood wished publishers "strength and hope", adding: "In a free world publishers and booksellers stand for the many. If free governments and the free human intelligence are to survive, the guardians and transmitters of words in all their multiplicity must be brave. I wish you strength and hope, and the courage to withstand the mobs on one hand and the whims of vengeful potentates on the other".
