Reports say that the James Bond books are being rewritten to get rid of “offensive” parts.
Sensitivity experts at Roald Dahl’s publisher, Penguin, wanted to take out some words from his books.
This meant taking out the words “fat” and “ugly.”
But after people complained, including Camilla Parker-Bowles, the Queen Consort, Penguin will publish “classic” versions of Dahl’s books with his original, unaltered words.
Now, though, it’s said that Ian Fleming’s famous spy books are being changed to take out words that could be seen as “offensive.”
People say that Fleming’s books, which were written in the 1950s and 1960s, use racist language.
According to a source, descriptions of Black characters have been “reworked” or “removed.”
But references to other races, like Bond’s racist comments about Asians and his thoughts on Goldfinger’s Korean sidekick Oddjob, are likely to stay.
Phrases like “sweet tang of r***,” “blithering women” can’t do “a man’s work,” and “homosexuality is a stubborn disability” will also stay in the books.
At the beginning of the reworked books, which will be released again in April to mark 70 years since Fleming’s first James Bond book, “Casino Royale,”
The disclaimer will read:
This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace.
A number of updates have been made in this edition while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it was set.
Many people have taken to social media to say bad things about the changes, just like they did when Penguin wanted to change Dahl’s books.
One person wrote on Twitter:
What’s next? The Bible? Any book tampered with should not in any way be sold under the original title!
Wokeness needs to be stamped out, and replaced with common sense.
Another said:
You realise that this is what Orwell warned us of in 1984?
Before it changed its mind, Penguin tried to take the word “fat” out of all of Dahl’s books. Instead, it called the character Augustus Gloop in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” “enormous.”
Changes would also have been made to the words used to talk about groups of people. For example, in earlier versions of Dahl’s books, many groups were just called “men.”
Penguin wants to use more inclusive and gender-neutral language, so the Oompa Loompas would have been called “small people” instead of “small men,” and the “Cloud-Men” in “James and the Giant Peach” would have been called “Cloud-People.”
But the backlash was so strong that the publisher decided not to make the changes.
Dahl, who died in 1990, once said that if publishers changed his language, he would never write another word.
He’s reported by a source to have said:
I’ve warned my publishers that if they later on so much as change a single comma in one of my books, they will never see another word from me. Never! Ever!
The comments, which were supposedly made more than 40 years ago, say Dahl even threatened to send the “enormous crocodile” from his book of the same name to “gobble them up” if they did.
