Teh One Who Knocks
05-22-2017, 11:17 AM
By the Heat Street Staff
http://i.imgur.com/fmF1Vhrh.jpg
Top British author Anthony Horowitz has revealed he was “warned off” introducing a black character into his new book because it was “inappropriate” for a white writer.
Horowitz (pictured), 62, who is Jewish and lives in London, wrote the hugely successful Alex Rider teenage spy novels.
But he said this weekend an editor advised him writing a black character into his new children’s book could be considered “patronising”.
“I will have to think about whether this character can be black or white,” he told the Mail on Sunday.
“I have for a long, long time said that there aren’t enough books around for every ethnicity.”
Horowitz explained to the paper there was a “chain of thought” in America that it was “inappropriate” for white writers to create black characters, adding it was considered “artificial and possibly patronising” because “it is actually not our experience”.
“Therefore I was warned off doing it. Which was, I thought, disturbing and upsetting.”
Horowitz said: “Taking it to the extreme, all my characters will from now be 62-year-old white Jewish men living in London.”
http://i.imgur.com/fmF1Vhrh.jpg
Top British author Anthony Horowitz has revealed he was “warned off” introducing a black character into his new book because it was “inappropriate” for a white writer.
Horowitz (pictured), 62, who is Jewish and lives in London, wrote the hugely successful Alex Rider teenage spy novels.
But he said this weekend an editor advised him writing a black character into his new children’s book could be considered “patronising”.
“I will have to think about whether this character can be black or white,” he told the Mail on Sunday.
“I have for a long, long time said that there aren’t enough books around for every ethnicity.”
Horowitz explained to the paper there was a “chain of thought” in America that it was “inappropriate” for white writers to create black characters, adding it was considered “artificial and possibly patronising” because “it is actually not our experience”.
“Therefore I was warned off doing it. Which was, I thought, disturbing and upsetting.”
Horowitz said: “Taking it to the extreme, all my characters will from now be 62-year-old white Jewish men living in London.”