Penguin pulls plug on Joe Sacco’s book on Muzaffarnagar riots

The publisher added, “We are very clear about this: if we know there is an inaccurate map and no changes are forthcoming, we will not do it. We have decided there will be no distribution of the book due to these red flags not being attended to.”

How many content queries were raised beyond the map issue remains unclear.

The book is available in India on some online platforms which source copies from UK-based wholesalers — a parallel distribution channel that PRH India has no control over. Some South Delhi bookstores, tired of waiting, have imported copies directly from the UK.

Sacco, who dedicated the book to India’s “hardworking rural journalists” — several assisted him as translators and researchers and also feature in its pages — visited Muzaffarnagar a year after the riots. In a recent interview for Prism magazine, he reflected on what drew him to the story. “It’s a question of looking at the lies and presenting them as lies,” he said. “‘She said, he said’ is not journalism. That’s just quoting people. In this case, it was possible to make an effort to find out what actually happened.”

In the book’s final chapter, “The Future Riot,” Sacco dwells on the politics behind the riots. The 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots occurred just months before the 2014 general elections. “Communal violence, planned or not, can confer some electoral advantage,” he writes, “and bloodshed, properly framed, is nothing but a political building block.”