If It’s Censored - Fiji Has It

If Fiji has any book censorship laws then they aren’t readily dis cernible to the naked eye. And all this is a very great delight to visitors from less enlightened countries —hence this advertisement that appeared in a local Fiji newspaper recently: POCKET BOOKS: Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Lolita; No, I am Not Afraid’, Return to Peyton Place; The Chinese Room; Confidential Love Letters, with Replies; The Bramble Bush; Nobody Cries For Me; Shadows of Shame; The Hard Blue Sky and many more Science Fiction books always available.

It’s the first time I’ve heard old Chatterley described as Science Fiction—it gives her quite an aura of respectability.

American paper-backs are also freely available in Fiji, at astronomical prices. When I bought an lan Fleming thriller in Suva in March it cost 7/- Fijian, although its companion-piece in an English Pan, which we had here last year, cost 3/9 Aust. Printed into the cover was/ the orginal American price tag—3s cents.

According to my arithmetic that’s about 3/3 Australian and less than three bob Fijian.

Apparently there is some fierce Customs duty on them in Fiji to jack them up to that price. UK paper-backs sell at normal prices.

Australian or New Zealand tourists—whom Fiji generally affects to despise because they don’t throw their money around like drunken sailors—fall for this sort of thing only once. But those poor old Yanks!

Travel certainly must broaden their minds in more ways than one.^JT.