Elizabeth Gilbert delays publication of novel The Snow Forest amid backlash
Elizabeth Gilbert is pulling her latest novel, The Snow Forest, from the release calendar.
Gilbert, who broke out with her 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love, announced her intentions to pull the novel from its current planned publication date on Monday. The author only announced the book, which was set to publish in Feb. 2024, last week.
"So last week I announced the publication date of my most recent novel, a book called The Snow Forest, that was set in the middle of Siberia in the middle of the last century, and told the story of a group of individuals who made a decision to remove themselves from society to resist the Soviet government and to try to defend nature against industrialization," Gilbert said in a video posted to her Instagram page.
"But over the course of this weekend, I have received an enormous, massive outpouring of reactions and response from my Ukrainian readers," she continued. "Expressing anger, sorrow, disappointment, and pain about the fact that I would choose to release a book into the world right now, any book, no matter what the subject of it is, that is set in Russia."
The author and her readers were referencing the war in Ukraine, which has been ongoing for over 400 days following Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year.
Gilbert went on to announce her intention to remove the book from its scheduled release date in respect to these concerns. "I want to say that I have heard these messages, have read these messages and I respect them," she said. "And as a result I'm making a course correction and removing the book from its publication schedule. It is not the time for this book to be published. And I do not want to add any harm to a group of people who have already experienced, and are continuing to experience, grievous and extreme harm."
The author concluded by adding that she has other book projects she's currently working on and will now be turning her attention to those projects.
She also noted in the caption that those who had been charged for a pre-order of the novel would be fully refunded.
A representative for Riverhead Press confirmed the book's removal from their publication calendar to EW, saying, "The book is being delayed indefinitely." They declined to comment further, referring us to Gilbert's remarks on social media.
Gilbert's previous novel was 2019's City of Girls. "Gilbert stays true to her pledge that she won't let her protagonist's sexuality be her downfall, like so many literary heroines before her," wrote EW critic Leah Greenblatt of the book. "That may be the most radical thing about a novel that otherwise revels in the old-fashioned pleasures of storytelling — the right to fall down rabbit holes, and still find your own wonderland."
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