[Regnum] Kharkiv publishing house KSD destroyed 30 thousand copies of the book "The Cruel Prince" by the US writer Sophie Lark, because they saw "romanticization of Russia" in the novel. This was reported on May 31 by the Ukrainian publication "Strana.ua".
"We have decided to destroy the print run of 30,000 copies and terminate the contract for all six books in the series. We acknowledge our mistake in concluding the contract with the author," the statement said.
The publisher reported that Lark had referred to Crimea as Russian and had also claimed that Grigori Rasputin "gave most of Ukraine to the Germans." The writer was also accused of describing Ukraine in a negative light.
The scandal surrounding Lark's works began with a series of publications on social networks. In one of the books, Elena Zelenskaya, who lives in Lviv, dreams of leaving the country and marrying a foreigner. She calls Ukrainian men rude and is outraged that Ukrainian cities "smell like diesel and are generally a complete horror," the publication says.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, an anti-Russian campaign unfolded in Ukraine after the 2014 coup d'état, which also affected books. In 2019, the country banned the circulation of Mikhail Bulgakov's book "The Master and Margarita" because the preface to the novel mentioned Russian cultural figures Yuri Karu, Nikolai Burlyaev, and Valentin Gaft.
That same year, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick's book "The Untold History of the United States" was banned in the country. The reason was that the authors presented a point of view on Ukrainian collaborators that did not coincide with the position of the Kiev regime.
In July 2023, public performance of songs and reading of books in Russian were banned in Kiev. In April 2024, all of Bulgakov's books were banned in Ukraine. The Kiev native was called an imperialist and Ukrainophobe.
In August 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to the systematic attempts by the Ukrainian authorities, supported by the West, to destroy Russian culture and language in the territories under their control. The head of state called such a policy a sure failure.