Paris (AFP)
Léo Scheer editions announced on Wednesday that marketing of Gabriel Matzneff's journal volume, "Les Carnets Noirs 2007-2008", and of the controversial book "Les under 16 ans", would stop.
Already on Tuesday, the Gallimard and La Table Ronde editions announced the end of the marketing of the Matzneff works they were editing.
The works of the writer still present in bookstores will be recalled by the publishers.
The publishers' decision comes after a preliminary investigation into the rape of minors under the age of 15 was opened against the writer the day after the publication of the book "Le Consentement" by the editor Vanessa Springora, in which it implicates the 83-year-old writer for his relations with minors.
"The suffering expressed by Mrs. Vanessa Springora in + The consent +, makes heard a word whose force justifies this exceptional measure", had justified Gallimard in a press release. The publisher has published Gabriel Matzneff's journal since 1990.
The last volume of Matzneff's journal, "L'amante de l'arsenal", was published in November 2019. It covers the years from 2016 to 2018, when he came out of his cancer and stayed in Italy. The writer started his diary in 1976 and spans 14 volumes.
A prevention association against pedophilia, the Blue Angel, also announced Wednesday that it was suing the writer for provocation to commit sexual attacks and rapes of minors as well as for apology for crime.
A first procedural hearing is to take place on February 12, according to a judicial source and the association's lawyer.
The claimed attraction of the writer for the "under 16" and for sex tourism with young boys in Asia, which he has told in numerous books, has long been tolerated in the literary world. It was thus distinguished in 2013 by the Renaudot essay prize.
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