LONDON

“BEING BANNED IS the Nirvana of book publishing. There is no publicity like being censored and fordidden by the powers that be. And it’s free. Free! Look, we’ve been pleading with the Vatican to ban our authors’ books for years but they’ve gone all woke and liberal over there, bastards. Believe me, groups like Palestine Action are a godsend. Everyone in this game is pleading with their writers to support it or something else on the terrorism shortlist.”

These are the words of a London literary agent, who preferred not to be named.

“Look, bookshops only account for about fifty percent of book sales in the UK. Really, they can be seen as street-level advertisements for online sales. If they take your book off the shelves of bookshops, normally, yes, it is a hit to sales, but not complete disaster; but if you are essentially banned for your political commitments, I mean full-on martyrdom in support of a distant cause with no local skin in the game, you just cannot buy publicity like that, and even people who think your writing stinks, they will buy your books online, if only to be associated with rebellion without any real consequences. Nothing sells like political martyrdom and censorship. And that whiff of cordite that I would spray on every book I represent if I could.”