'My first feeling was not of upset or anger... it was fear'

With his country poised to take over the EU presidency, a Hungarian writer talks about homophobic laws and his worries for the young, after his children's book was banned

- TOM WATLING

Anger was not the first feeling Boldizsar Nagy experienced when the book he had been trying to publish for 10 years was branded “homosexual propaganda”. It was fear.

The editor, from the small town of Zagyvarekas, 60 miles southeast of Budapest, had grown up unable to see himself in the stories he read. “It was only when I got to university did I understand that I had a right to have a dignified representation of myself [in literature],” he said. “So I decided then I’d like to work on children’s books … I’d like to make books about diversity.”

A decade and countless rejections from wary publishers later, Mr Nagy finally got what he needed. A Fairytale for Everyone, an anthology of retellings of traditional fairy tales, was published by Hungarian lesbian rights group and NGO Labrisz. “I was bloody happy,” said Mr Nagy, now 40, who edited the book. “That was my dream.”

But then came the backlash. Four days after publication, a politician, Dora Duro – a member of the far-right Our Homeland Movement – held a press conference to rail against the anthology. At the end of her diatribe, she ripped up the book page by page and dropped it through a shredder. “Homosexual princes are not part of Hungarian culture,” she said, claiming that “children are being subjected to homosexual propaganda”.

Two weeks later, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, entered the debate. “Hungary is a patient, tolerant country as regards homosexuality,” he said. “But there is a red line that cannot be crossed, and this is how I would sum up my opinion: leave our children alone.”

Less than a year later, in 2021, Mr Orban’s administration passed the “Child Protection Act” (CPA), which banned the publishing of LGBT+ material for under 18s. The law has remained in place ever since.