Iran’s straight-laced censors are not known for their tolerance of sexually risque literature, so a book called A Memory of My Melancholy Whores was never likely to meet with their approval.

But in their determination to get Gabriel García Márquez’s highly acclaimed work into the bookshops, local publishers hit on an audacious ruse – .

As a result, the normally vigilant gaze of culture and Islamic guidance ministry officials was averted when a novel by the Nobel prize-winning author innocuously titled Memories of My Melancholy Sweethearts was submitted and accordingly authorised for publication.

On November 15 each year International PEN stages the . PEN members do what they can to “raise public awareness of the plight of their colleagues worldwide,” writing protest appeals, staging events, and calling attention to imprisoned writers around the globe. Five writers in particular are selected “to represent the global spread of the problems as well as to illustrate the types of attacks.”

This year, the five writers are: Zargana (Myanmar/Burma), Normando Hernández González (Cuba), Fatou Jaw Manneh (Gambia), Yaghoub Yadali (Iran), and Dzamshid Karimov (Uzbekistan).