A literary controversy that should not win France. A rewrite of Roald Dahl’s books, as undertaken in Britain to remove terms that might be considered offensive, is not on the cards in France, according to Gallimard Jeunesse, which publishes the writings of world famous children’s author.

“This rewrite only affects Great Britain. We have never modified the texts of Roald Dahl and, to date, it is not planned, “a spokesperson for the French publisher told Agence France-Presse.

The affair was revealed on Friday by a conservative British daily, the Daily Telegraph. The rights holders have undertaken to smooth the language of all the children’s novels by the beloved author of several generations. The Puffin editions (Penguin Random House group) will now publish a different text from the original.

“When reprinting books written years ago, it’s not unusual to review the language used and update other things like the cover and the layout,” the holder said. -word of the company that manages the work, Roald Dahl Story Company.

The number of modified terms is vast, touching on issues considered sensitive: race and ethnicity, gender, weight, physical appearance, mental health, violence, etc. A “hugely big” character became “huge”. “A crazy thing” became “a weird thing”.

“This is nonsense censorship,” wrote writer Salman Rushdie on Twitter. “If Dahl offends us, let’s not reprint it,” said another best-selling children’s author, Philip Pullman, when interviewed by the BBC. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak believes the words should be “preserved” rather than “retouched”, his spokesman told reporters.

Roald Dahl (1916-1990) began to be translated into French in the 1960s. Gallimard published James and the Big Peach in 1966, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1967, and subsequently reissued them regularly. Less known to the general public than in the English-speaking world, it is nonetheless a very popular classic in France, with all its children’s titles available in the Folio collection.

“A rewritten Roald Dahl novel is no longer a Roald Dahl novel,” said translator and columnist Bérengère Viennot on online media Slate. The cultural weekly Télérama pointed out the “risk of erasing in passing the benevolent irreverence” of the author with caustic humor.

In France, the literary culture passes a very severe judgment on the alterations of works already published. This was evident in the dropping of novel titles containing the word “nigger”, which caused some consternation. Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Niggers in 2020 and Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of Narcissus in 2022 suffered a similar fate: those UK book titles were dropped in favor of They Were Ten for Agatha Christie and Children of the Sea for Joseph Conrad.

However, no French publishing house has recourse to the services of a sensitivity reader, a proofreader specifically responsible for detecting offensive terms or passages in books to be published. Roald Dahl Story Company is now owned by a cultural giant, the American platform Netflix, known for its preference for so-called “inclusive” fiction.

Gallimard, meanwhile, is a publisher known for not being afraid of controversy. Asked about calls for a boycott aimed at fellow Briton, Harry Potter creator J K Rowling, because of her positions on gender theory, Gallimard Jeunesse director Hedwige Pasquet said in June 2020: “As a house of publishing, freedom of expression is our credo. This is our top priority. »