A short history of Fairyland
The beginnings
The first ideas came up in Labrisz Association in 2019.
The expert team was comprised of editor and expert on children’s literature Boldizsár Nagy, psychologist and literary scholar Anna Borgos, literature teacher Noémi Lőrincz and project leader and gender researcher Dorottya Rédai.
We publicised a call for new and less well-known authors and invited some well-known ones personally to contribute to the volume.
The sum of the call for contributions was that we were looking for stories based on the free reinterpretation of classical tales, describing the lives of socially excluded, marginalised characters.
From the stories we received, the expert jury selected 17 stories. One third of these feature main characters who depict the life experiences and deeply human dilemmas of sexual and gender minorities.
A three-person team
20 September 2020: the book launch of A Fairytale for Everyone in a Massolit Bookshop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR3ZecdgR68&t=865s
A few days after its release, the book is publicly torn up and shredded by Dóra Dúró, a politician from extreme right-wing party Our Homeland Movement, because she claims that “this is propaganda for homosexualism, and Fairyland does not belong to perverts”.
In October 2020, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also speaks up in the public political debate surrounding the book on political state-owned radio channel Kossuth Rádió. “There is a red line they [LGBTQ+ people] mustn’t cross. They must leave our children alone!”
In the first months after the book’s release, there are political, pedagogical, psychological, education psychological and public arguments for and against the book’s contents and possible messages.
In November 2020 it is released as an e-book. There is so much interest in the volume that this month already sees its third edition. In the first three months after its publication, 19 thousand copies of the book are sold.
Slowly
the book becomes a channel and expression for resistance and activism against the government’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Publishing houses abroad express their interest in it, launching its international career.
Enthusiastic bloggers, Hungarian and international actors voice their support for the book. Well-known Hungarian actors read out the tales in a series of videos available on Youtube.
In the October 12 issue of daily paper Magyar Nemzet, sociologist and economist György Németh compares the book A Fairytale for Everyone to paedophilia, and Labrisz Lesbian Association to a paedophile organisation. Labrisz starts a lawsuit with the help of the Helsinki Committee; the first-degree verdict of the court in November 2021 finds Mediaworks Hungary, the publisher of the paper, guilty of libel, and obliges it to apologize and pay a compensation of HUF 1 million. Magyar Nemzet appeals the verdict.
In December 2020, in an investigation started on a whistleblowing report, the Budapest City Government Office finds that “the book is sold as a collection of fairy tales, which is referenced both in its title and the illustration on its cover, but there is no indication that the tales depict behaviours that deviate from traditional gender roles. Thus, consumers may unknowingly be exposed to content that goes beyond the common attributes of fairy tales and make decisions about buying the book based on misleading information.” The Government Office demands that Labrisz do whatever is in its power to provide customers with exhaustive information.
In June 2021, the so-called child protection law, which is in fact a ban on homosexual and transgender “propaganda”, enters into force.
The fourth edition of the book, published in August, can only be sold at book shops in a plastic wrapping, and placed in hardly visible places.
The interest
of foreign publishers intensifies, the book continues its triumphal procession over the borders, it is widely promoted, there are more and more foreign publications, interviews and contacts.
In September 2021, Dorottya Rédai, CEO of Labrisz Lesbian Association and project leader of A Fairytale for Everyone, is elected among the 100 most influential people of the year by TIME Magazine.
In October 2022, the first foreign language version of the book is published, in Dutch. Within one year, it is published in nine other foreign languages (Polish, Slovakian, German, Swedish, Estonian, English, Finnish, Czech and French).
The Budapest Regional Court of Appeal
passes a verdict on 02 February 2022 saying that the reputation of Labrisz Lesbian Association was not harmed by the article in Magyar Nemzet which labelled them an organisation of paedophiles. Labrisz appeals the verdict, but the appeal is rejected in November 2022 by the Supreme Court and in October 2023 by the Constitution Court. The legal case continues at the European Court of Human Rights.
In March 2022, Labrisz Lesbian Association wins a court case against the Budapest City Government Office and another one against the police. In the first case, the Budapest City Government Office was obliged to start a new procedure, because it had passed its illegal decision without considering the book as a whole. In the other lawsuit, the court found the police guilty of not acting against a homophobic event which terrorized children and thus kept them away from a story reading event.
Members of Labrisz and EJHA
Meanwhile abroad
During the 2022 Summer Book Week, A Fairytale for Everyone receives the prize for “the most innovative book of the year” from the HUBBY student jury.
In September 2022, A Fairytale for Everyone is discussed at the European Geographies of Sexualities Conference in Cádiz: Dorottya Rédai and Anna Borgos talk about the political and psychological aspects of “child protection”.
In October 2022, the English version is published, with a book launch in London and book signing sessions.
In November 2022, the book gets another international acknowledgement: the “Petite Pen Prize” from Catalonian writers’ association PEN Catalá.
https://labrisz.hu/hirek/petite_pen_prize_a_labrisznak.893.html?pageid=58
In November 2022, Dorottya Rédai receives the P&V Foundation Citizenship Award in Brussels. https://www.foundationpv.be/en/-/laureates-2022
Also in November 2022, the foreign language editions of A Fairytale for Everyone have a book launch at the European Parliament.
An article about this (in Hungarian):
írásban: https://konyvesmagazin.hu/friss/meseorszag_mindenkie_europai_parlament_konyvbemutato.html
and a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ-vLztTDNI
"Man is a magical divine creature, endowed with a multitude of rainbow colors and the responsibility of freedom. Our main task is to learn to accept each other. It cannot be practiced early enough. That's what fairy tales are for, for children and adults."
(Kriszta Bódis, writer, psychologist, documentary filmmaker)
Magyar