Each year at Harbourfront’s International Festival of Authors, the literary festival currently underway (until Saturday) in Toronto, PEN Canada sponsors an empty chair to bring attention to writers around the world who have been imprisoned or attacked for their work. (This year’s empty chair honours Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan.)

In a similar vein, the International Publishers Association, based in Geneva, is bestowing a special award on Ifran Sanci, owner of the Turkish publishing house Sel, who is on trial in his native country for publishing a classic work of erotic fiction by Gabriel Appolinaire. The Turkish translation of Appolinaire’s 1911 novel The Exploits of a Young Don Juan ran afoul of Turkey’s obscenity laws and resulted in prosecution being brought against Sanci, whose next appearance in court is scheduled for Nov. 2, the same day he is to receive the award from the IPA.

From the Guardian:

The development comes just eight months after Turkey was censured by the European Court of Human Rights for convicting another publisher, Rahmi Akdas, “for publishing obscene or immoral material liable to arouse and exploit sexual desire among the population,” with a translation of a different Apollinaire novel, Les onze milles verges (The Eleven Thousand Rods). The court ruled in February that Turkey violated freedom of expression laws and prevented access to Europe’s literary heritage when it banned the novel, which details the erotic adventures of the debauched Romanian aristocrat Mony Vibescu and his fellow sybarites, and was banned in France itself until 1970.

Sanci said of his situation: “I am being punished in my own country but am also getting an international award. This is tragic. Everything aside, Apollinare’s book, which is a part of the world’s cultural heritage, is being tried for hurting the public’s sense of shame.”