“In August, the government acknowledged that it had banned 4,390 books since 2014, hundreds of them this year, including many works of literature that had once been considered untouchable, setting off street demonstrations and online protests.” Among the Western titles on the censors’ list are One Hundred Years of Solitude, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and 1984 (in one Arabic translation but not another). As for poor little mermaid Ariel? As one activist says, “There are no hijab-wearing mermaids. The powers that be thought her dress was promiscuous. It’s humiliating.”