I never thought I’d see the day when my thrillers would come to the attention of the Chinese Government. But THIRST, my Antarctic thriller, has done exactly that. A condensed version of the story was due to be released in a Reader’s Digest fiction volume destined for Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and India. Not, I might add, for the Chinese market. But the Chinese printers contacted Reader’s Digest demanding that the words Falun Gong be removed and that a character’s torture, because she would not recant her beliefs, was to be changed, using the word ‘torment’ instead of ‘torture’. I refused, and I was withdrawn from the Reader’s Digest volume.

If you would like to know more, please follow this link to Nick Cohen’s article in The Guardian and The Observer in the UK Sunday 30 March 2014, and the Australian Guardian.

I would like to add that Reader’s Digest was caught between a rock and a hard place and sympathised with my decision not to alter my words. Both the publisher and the author lost out as a result of the censorship.