Writer Elizabeth Gilbert will cancel the release of a book set in Russia

The author of the bestselling book Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, has announced that she will suspend the publication of her new novel set in Soviet Russia. This happened after she was criticized for releasing the book during the Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Source. This was reported by the BBC.

The book was to be published in February 2024. Gilbert said she would "correct the course".

She wrote about this on Instagram.

"During the week, I received an incredible amount of desperate reactions from my Ukrainian readers, expressing anger, despair, frustration, anger and pain because I chose this time to release this book.

Any book set in Russia would elicit such a reaction.

I want to say that I have heard and read all the messages, and I respect them. And so I am withdrawing the book from publication. Now is not the time for this book," she said.

The book tells the story of a group of people who decided to leave their community to resist the Soviet government and protect nature from industrialization. The Snow Forest is based on the story of the Lykov family, who spent more than 40 years in the Siberian wilderness with little or no contact with people. According to Gilbert, she was inspired to write the novel by her isolation during the pandemic.

Shortly after the announcement of the new book, Gilbert's Ukrainian fans began to criticize her on social media.

In the comments that appeared in her feed, people pointed out that the book's release date in February 2024 would coincide with the anniversary of the war. Others compared the publication of a book "glorifying" Russians to "writing a book about brave Germans in the 1940s."

Background. As a reminder, Prince Harry's book The Spare became the fastest-selling nonfiction book in the country in its history. During the first week of the memoir's sale in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, more than 1.4 million copies were sold in all formats.