Romain Rouillard 8:30 p.m., February 28, 2023
Ian Flemming's famous spy novels have been edited and edited to replace terms deemed offensive.
Reviewers have been tasked with identifying passages that might spark controversy, as was the case with the writings of Roald Dahl a few days ago.
Warning shot on the novels of Ian Fleming.
The British author, at the origin of the famous spy novels featuring James Bond, saw his writings undergo some modifications, as noticed by the English daily newspaper The
Telegraph
.
Ian Fleming Publications has just announced the forthcoming publication of new reissued versions of the works in question, purged of all references deemed racist or offensive.
"Sensitivity readers", in other words readers responsible for identifying problematic passages, were called upon to adapt the adventures of the famous spy of his majesty as is now usual in Anglo-Saxon countries.
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Concretely, the term "nigger" is banished from the prose of Ian Flemming to be replaced by "black man" or "black person".
The works also underwent other rather surprising alterations.
Thus, in
Live and Let Die
, released in 1954, the scene taking place in a strip club located in the New York district of Harlem is now amputated by an entire section of Ian Flemming's sentence.
"Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the watering hole. He felt his own hands grab the tablecloth. His mouth was dry" thus becomes "Bond could feel the electrical tension in the room".
Skin color qualifiers disappear
Another sentence has also been shortened for reasons that are difficult to discern.
"They're pretty law-abiding guys, except when they've had too much to drink" suddenly became "They're pretty law-abiding guys".
In addition, the qualifiers of skin color of certain protagonists have disappeared.
Black gangsters and bartenders become simple gangsters or bartenders.
Nevertheless, the Telegraph
notes
, the editors seemed to turn a blind eye to other passages that might have caught their attention.
Homosexuality is thus always described there as a "tenacious handicap", the caricatures targeting Asians remain intact and passages that could be assimilated to sexism, in particular women incapable of doing "man's work", always appear in The works.
"Following this approach, we examined the occurrences of different racial words in the books and made the choice to remove some of them or replace them with terms that are equivalent and more accepted today," the publisher said. British as justification.
A gesture that comes a few days after the rewriting of certain classics of Roald Dahl in order to repeal a handful of words deemed unsuitable.
In 2020, it was the very title of an Agatha Christie novel –
Ten little niggers
– which had been modified to be renamed
They were ten
.