Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture has ordered local publishers to stop publishing romance novels amid reports that the steamy literature is “poisoning” the minds of the country’s young.
The decision was announced by the Ministry’s Publishing and Printing Department that said many romance novels, particularly those imported from China, are filled with homoerotic romance that is filled with "clichéd, useless, obscene and offensive" content reports Thanh Nien.
Publishing houses have been asked to remove “indecent and unsuitable" language from their published works, in addition to those in progress.
The Publishing Department’s director, Chu Van Hoa, told the newspaper that the ban is "just temporary."
"We do not shut down any genre of books, but the government needs to regulate an activity related to culture and people's way of thinking so that it can benefit people."
Hoa added that only those publishers capable of printing “good books” will be allowed to publish romance novels in the future.
Since the begging of the year, translated Chinese romance novels, including danmei, the Chinese name for gay romance novels, and others which “are "trashy" with vulgar contents, giving young people unrealistic ideas about love and relationships, and even promoting rape,” have been targeted by the Vietnamese media.
This effects of the ban will likely have a major impact on the Vietnamese publishing industry as such books sell better than any other genre.
