Silent readings of Ted Dawe’s Into the River are being planned across New Zealand tomorrow in protest at the much-praised young adult novel’s nationwide ban.

Following a complaint from Christian group Family First about the award-winning title’s “detailed descriptions of sex acts, coarse language and scenes of drug-taking”, New Zealand’s Board of Film and Literature Review has placed an interim restriction order on Into the River, meaning that “no one in New Zealand can distribute, or exhibit, the book”. Individuals who breach the order face a fine of $3,000 and companies who breach it will be fined $10,000. The board will revise the order and consider a permanent age restriction for the novel in October.

Into the River, the coming-of-age story of a Maori boy whose intelligence wins him a place at a prestigious boarding school, where he faces racism and bullying, won Dawe the 2013 New Zealand Post Margaret Mahy Book of the Year award. Its ban has prompted a wave of outrage from New Zealanders, authors and the international book community, with silent readings planned tomorrow in Auckland, Dunedin and Wellington as the literary world throws its weight behind Dawe.

Can you pick the quotes from Ted Dawe's banned novel Into the River? Read more

Auckland’s Time Out bookstore, meanwhile, has pulled together a window display of previously banned books from Animal Farm to The Catcher in the Rye, including Into the River inside a paper bag, in protest at the ban. “Into The River can be a confronting book, but it’s an honest one. We look forward to removing the paper bag and selling it again,” wrote the bookshop’s Jenna Todd. “It’s gritty, unapologetic and raw. It contains sex, drugs and swear words. But when read in context, its confronting scenes add depth to the protagonist Te Arepa’s toxic surroundings. Many of the so-called scandalous and ‘offensive’ scenes result in negative experiences for him. It’s a good book. And this week, I have been told we will be fined $10,000 if we sell or display it.”

The New Zealand Book Council said it was “alarmed” by the decision to impose the interim ban, and that if an age restriction is imposed on the “challenging and ambitious novel that explores the reality of what many young people are struggling with in New Zealand today”, it will “set a dangerous precedent, which could lead to more books being restricted in New Zealand”.



The Publishers Association of New Zealand also condemned the ban of the “highly regarded piece of literature, charged with influencing and changing the lives of many of its teenage male readers”. “This is an unprecedented and extreme action by the Film and Literature Board of Review,” said president Melanie Laville-Moore. “Banning books is not the New Zealand way.”

Dawe, head of studies at Taylors College for international students in Auckland, told the New Zealand Herald that “New Zealand has taken a giant step towards that sort of regulatory moralising that I think most people felt we had left far in our past”. He added that “people involved with teaching boys, especially English teachers, know how important books like this are because they speak to boys about the things that other boys’ books don’t have the firepower or the vitality to do effectively”.

Into the River “was never about sex and drugs, it was always about bullying and how that damages people for the rest of their lives. That is really the underlying theme; everything else is just the trappings that go along with that,” he said.

Readers and authors around the world have vowed to buy and read the novel in solidarity with Dawe. The award-winning young adult author James Dawson told the Guardian: “History does not look kindly on the banning, or indeed burning, of books. This is the worst kind of censorship, and doubly surprising from a country like New Zealand which is in so many ways forward-thinking. On the plus side, I hadn’t previously heard of this title, but you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be seeking it out now.”