{"id":100144,"date":"2026-05-06T07:53:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T07:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/100144\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T07:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T07:53:13","slug":"author-faces-backlash-over-israeli-character-in-new-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/100144\/","title":{"rendered":"Author faces backlash over Israeli character in new novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bestselling author is facing a flurry of anger from fans after advance copies of her upcoming novel<\/a> identified a character as Israeli, a move that her critics say advances \u201cnormalization\u201d of a country they oppose.<\/p>\n

Rebecca \u201cR. F.\u201d Kuang, the Chinese-American author of the 2023 satirical novel \u201cYellowface\u201d and \u201cThe Poppy War\u201d trilogy, is set to publish her seventh novel, \u201cTaipei Story,\u201d in September. The advance version, an excerpt of which was leaked on social media on Sunday, includes a short scene involving an Israeli musician.<\/p>\n

The musician, a successful pianist whose performance ignites a near-religious fervor for a character in the story, is not named, and the text identifies him as \u201ca dour-faced man who did not so much as crack a smile as we applauded.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was enough to trigger some readers and potential readers who said Kuang was whitewashing Israel in the wake of the war in Gaza<\/a>, even as she has previously expressed support for the movement to boycott Israel.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cRF kuang had 190+ countries to choose from to write about a character\u2019s nationality and she still chose to write about the one who\u2019s actively committing gen0cide against Palestinians for years,\u201d user alltoowellreads wrote on X, in one representative comment that has been shared nearly 1,000 times that used an online version of the word \u201cgenocide\u201d meant to evade censors.<\/p>\n

\"RebeccaRebecca (R.F.) Kuang attends the 2023 TIME100 Next event at Second Floor on October 24, 2023 in New York City. (credit: Mike Coppola\/Getty Images)Readers canceled preorders of the book<\/p>\n

Others railed against the excerpt on Threads, where there is a thriving community of people discussing books. Some readers said they even canceled their preorders of the book.<\/p>\n

Kuang and her publicists did not respond to requests for comment, and she has disabled comments on her recent Instagram posts, where she has not addressed the criticism.<\/p>\n

The backlash to Kuang\u2019s inclusion of the Israeli character reflects a trend in the literary world, in which even minor mentions of Israel or Israelis are enough to land authors on boycott lists.<\/p>\n

The trend predates the most recent war in Gaza: Casey McQuiston, the author of the 2019 romance novel \u201cRed, White, and Royal Blue,\u201d initially included a scene where the US president jokes that an ambassador \u201csaid something idiotic about Israel, and now I have to call Netanyahu and personally apologize.\u201d In 2021, McQuiston said they would remove the reference to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> in future printings of the book.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the trend has intensified after Oct. 7 thrust Israel into the center stage of cultural conversations. An online list titled \u201cIs your fav author a Zionist???\u201d that went viral in 2024 urged boycotts against authors for whom the crowd-sourced answer was yes.<\/p>\n

Some authors landed on the list without ever commenting publicly about Israel or Gaza. Gabrielle Zevin, for example, was included in part because her 2024 hit novel about Jewish video game designers, \u201cTomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,\u201d received backlash for its inclusion of an Israeli character even though he was presented unfavorably. (Zevin also drew criticism for having spoken at a Hadassah event in February 2023.)\\<\/p>\n

Readers speculate reasoning behind Israeli character<\/p>\n

Kuang\u2019s silence on the dustup has left some readers to speculate about why she chose to identify the pianist as Israeli in \u201cTaipei Story,\u201d a work of literary fiction about a young Chinese-American woman on an intensive summer language program in Taiwan.<\/p>\n

Kuang, whose work largely deals with the Asian diaspora from an anti-colonial perspective, has historically supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. In December, she withdrew from an appearance at a literature festival in Dubai, citing a call from the BDS movement.<\/p>\n

That record had led some of her fans to argue that the Israeli character may have been included to subtly critique Israel. Others speculated without evidence that Kuang could have been paid to mention Israel in the book, while others simply expressed bafflement or anger at her choice to mention a state they believe is a colonial enterprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking your books sm about colonization but normalizing israel is insane to me idk im very disappointed,\u201d wrote one X user who garnered 1 million views with the sentiment. (\u201cSm\u201d is internet shorthand for \u201cso much.\u201d)<\/p>\n

For Jews who have been keeping a close eye on trends in publishing since Oct. 7, the response to the Kuang excerpt has been worrying, even if its ultimate impact remains unclear. Meg Keene, a writer who argues that data shows a sidelining of Jewish content in new book deals, summarized the brouhaha with a deflated tweet: \u201cThis is where we are now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even some Jews who do not identify as Zionists say they see something worrying in the backlash to the Kuang excerpt.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people canceling a preorder over [a] single mention of an Israeli pianist being booked at a concert hall in R.F. Kuang\u2019s new book lack so much f\u2013king nuance. There\u2019s literally no mention of Zionism yet y\u2019all can\u2019t seem to differentiate,\u201d wrote a Jewish threads user who goes by Axis of Anarchy.<\/p>\n

After experiencing some blowback, she followed up: \u201cAlso stop with this \u2018y\u2019all\u2019 business about normalizing Israel. This is exactly the problem and I have been very vocal on calling Zionists out on their s\u2013t so goodness forbid, I point out when y\u2019all are taking your s\u2013t too far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Kuang has closed most of her recent Instagram posts to comments, her readers continue to comment on older ones that are still open, asking the author about her choice to include an Israeli character.<\/p>\n

Some books bloggers argue that the immediate call to boycott Kuang\u2019s latest book is akin to censorship , and distracting from literary analysis.<\/p>\n

\u201cReactionary outrage like this only acts as a form of censorship, because it discourages analysis,\u201d wrote a user who goes by emily.isliterate, accompanying a widely viewed video on the episode. \u201cFrom what I can read, I think Kuang (in very few words) manages to criticize the way people treat musicians from certain places over others (namely colonizer states). Maybe people stopped reading after the word Israel or they simply can\u2019t garner subtext and theme, but either way, I think the entire situation is troublesome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bestselling author is facing a flurry of anger from fans after advance copies of her upcoming novel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[14607,3768,23637,461,29547,37,34998,498],"class_list":{"0":"post-100144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-anti-israel","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-boycott","11":"tag-culture","12":"tag-gaza-israel","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-novel","15":"tag-palestine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116526553727178217","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}