Tom Hanks is to address next month’s Dalkey Book Festival.
The actor will attend next month’s event, to address the festival, along with speaking about his move from screen to page, including the release of his debut novel The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece.
This event will also be addressed by U2 lead singer Bono and physician Brian Cox.
Running from June 15-18, the Dalkey Book Festival will also include a some of the world’s foremost thinkers and writers.
A line up which includes Roddy Doyle, Dylan Moran, Sebestian Barry, John Banville, Liz Nugent, Deirdre O’Kane and others.
Tickets go on sale this Wednesday from 10am via dalkeybookfestival.org.
Banville Blasts “disgraceful” Book Edits
News of Hanks’ impending arrival at next month’s book festival, comes just weeks after writer John Banville had hit out at the changes made to Roald Dahl novels. He branded them “disgraceful”.
These changes which were announced by the late writers’ publishers and estate, include the removal of words such as ‘fat’, which will be replaced by ‘enourmous’.
Other words that were removed from the books, also include ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’ due to mental health concerns.
“It’s childish”, Banville stated. “Children love Roald Dahl because he’s so awful. Children are completely ruthless”.
“Robert Louis Stevenson used to call his books like Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde ‘crawlers’, books that make your flesh crawl”, he continued. “Children love that and it’s good for them. But also, you must not change the text”.
“Better to suppress the text altogether than to change it. That’s an outrage. And Roald Dahl is dead, he can’t defend himself”.
These changes to the Roald Dahl books were also castigated by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
“When it comes to our rich and varied literary heritage, the prime minister agrees with the BFG that we shouldn’t gobblefunk around with words”, a spokesperson saidon the PM’s behalf.
More on this from Nova here.
