Novelist Yvan Godbout, charged in 2019 with production and distribution of child pornography over a passage from his novel Hansel and Gretel and acquitted in 2020, is ending his writing career. “I just can’t put my name in some articles anymore. […] because I know I’m going to find two horrible words right next to it,” he wrote on Facebook Monday.
The Quebec author was arrested by the Sûreté du Québec in March 2019 and then accused of producing child pornography for a passage from his horror novel Hansel and Gretel (2017) in which he explicitly described the incestuous rape of a little girl. The publisher of the novel, Les Éditions AdA, was also accused.
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Hansel and Gretel, a 250-page novel that almost only shares the title with the famous fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, tells the ordeal of a brother and sister who suffer physical, sexual and psychological abuse. This is a science fiction horror novel.
The charges against Yvan Godbout were filed following a complaint from a teacher to the Régie intermunicipale de Police Thérèse-De Blainville in January 2018.
My heart and mind have reached their limit.
The Quebec Supreme Court subsequently acquitted the author and his publisher in September 2020, while also invalidating certain articles of the Penal Code relating to child pornography offenses.
Despite the acquittal, the author claimed to have suffered greatly from these allegations. In particular, he had received death threats in the mail and on social networks. Éditions AdA had also collapsed financially, and 40 people had lost their jobs there.
Forbidden Stories brought to the small screen without Hansel and Gretel
Yvan Godbout announced his retirement from writing just hours after La Presse announced that the Forbidden Tales book series, with the exception of his novel Hansel and Gretel, would be adapted for the small screen.
There’s no telling if the two messages are related, as the author has stated on Facebook that he will not be answering questions about his announcement.
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Yvan Godbout and his novel Hansel and Gretel
Photo: Facebook/Yvan Godbout – Author/Yves Légaré
I thought I was strong enough to outrun the storm, but I was wrong. For five years, I navigated public opinion with increasingly strained shoulders. The media has and will only ever have one way of portraying me: through the Hansel and Gretel affair, cold and unnuanced, he explained in a lengthy publication.
I am retiring from my writing career (I will fulfill my 2023 commitments and ongoing projects) and will try to re-enter the job market. A market I should never have left […] The literary world didn’t know what to do with me anyway.
Forbidden Tales brings together more than 40 books by 15 Quebec authors. The literary series adapts popular fairy tales such as “Cinderella”, “The Wizard of Oz” and “Beauty and the Beast” into horror novels for adults.
Éditions AdA and production company Attraction, which confirmed the television adaptation project on Monday, said it will primarily be aimed at the international market.