Austrian cultural figures have launched a campaign to buy a villa once home to the writer Stefan Zweig after its owner, the automotive magnate Wolfgang Porsche, unexpectedly put it on the market following a row over his plans to build a private tunnel for his car collection.

Zweig, the Austrian Jewish writer whose novels inspired the Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel, lived in the 17th-century property until 1934 when he was driven out of Salzburg by the Austro-fascist regime and his family was forced to sell it at a rock-bottom price.

The Villa Europa, as it was known in his lifetime, was not only the place where he did much of his writing but was also a cultural meeting point for prominent figures, including James Joyce, Thomas Mann and Richard Strauss.

It was bought in 2020 for €8.4m (£7.2m) by Porsche, who has put it on the market for €12.7m after undertaking renovations. His plans to build a private 500-metre tunnel to transport his car collection to the house had created a public outcry.

Singers, composers and writers are among several thousand people who have signed a petition to the federal and local government, which calls the plans to acquire the Zweig villa “a cultural responsibility to future generations” and an “opportunity to make this unique place publicly accessible and usable … and to make its significance for Austrian and European cultural history tangible for everyone”.

Bernhard Fügenschuh, the rector of the University of Salzburg, which he said had the means to secure the villa, said Austria had a moral obligation to keep it as a place of commemoration for Zweig. The university would see itself as an interim owner until others were able to raise the funds, he added.

“There’s very much a societal responsibility here. As a university, and as a public institution, we’ve decided to take this on because we believe the window of opportunity is potentially very short,” he said.

“This Stefan Zweig villa is, if you will, the most visible symbol of this history, this responsibility, which Austria as a whole carries. And that is why it is so incredibly important.”

Fügenschuh said Porsche’s decision to put the villa on the market had provided the city with a rare opportunity after it had in the past tried to buy it and failed.

He said the university was in discussions with the federal ministry of women, science and research, which needs to approve the plans.

Planning permission to build a tunnel through the Kapuzinerberg, on which the villa is nestled and which caused considerable unrest in Salzburg, is included in the purchase price. However, a new owner would only have until the end of 2028 to utilise it.

Zweig described the house as “romantic and impractical”, writing that among its charms was that it was “inaccessible to cars” and could “only be reached by climbing the more than a hundred steps” of the Kapuzinerberg.

It is the sort of discussion that literary festivals pride themselves on being able to hold in a nuanced, civilised manner: are certain corporations ethical enough to sponsor the arts?

Yet the debate over the role of Baillie Gifford, an investment management firm, in several of the UK’s leading festivals has spiralled into a national row far too large to be contained inside a marquee.

On Monday, Baillie Gifford will start meeting leaders of festivals to discuss the future of the firm’s sponsorship, after two of its beneficiaries – the Hay festival and Edinburgh international book festival – decided last week they could no longer accept its money, following a campaign by some authors and others in the book industry.

The campaign by Fossil Free Books (FFB), an activist collective of more than 800 authors and publishing workers, has focused on billions of pounds of investments that the Edinburgh-based firm holds in companies linked to the fossil fuel industry and to Israel. Among some of the seven festivals that remain sponsored by Baillie Gifford, there is fear that the financiers will conclude their involvement is no longer good for either them or the festivals.

It would leave a substantial hole in the budgets of organisations that have survived the pandemic and cost of living crisis partly because of corporate sponsorship.

Baillie Gifford says it can only make investments on its clients’ instructions, and that only 2% of its clients’ money is invested in business related to fossil fuels, compared with the market average of 11%. It also said demands that it divest from large technology companies, including Amazon and Meta, Airbnb and Booking.com, were “unreasonable … much as it would be unreasonable to demand authors boycott Instagram or stop selling books on Amazon.”

Toby Mundy, a leading literary agent and director of the Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction, said: “We’re proud of our association with Baillie Gifford, who have … contributed enormously to a free and open and plural literary culture in the UK. Our board is more than satisfied that Baillie Gifford is a force for good and is contributing positively to the post-carbon transition.

“I think the campaign is well intentioned, but ultimately it’s destructive and counterproductive because it gravely jeopardises a fragile ecosystem that has taken decades to build. And there are no obvious alternative supporters waiting in the wings … Were [Baillie Gifford] to withdraw, which I hope very much that they won’t, all these activities would be put in grave danger.”

Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers, defended FFB as “calm, informed and courteous”, saying: “People act as if FFB are trying to kill book festivals, instead of working to imagine a healthier future for them. The array of bad-faith arguments, defeatism, defensiveness and rusty culture war formulations thrown at FFB online has been alarming.

“[They] simply believe in the adaptation and survival of our most vital communal spaces as writers and readers, through the distancing of these spaces from financial complicity in genocide or unsustainable fossil fuel investments. If that is such a death blow to the festival model then we must all work together to create a new one.”

The FFB campaign was formed after Greta Thunberg pulled out of the Edinburgh books festival in August last year, accusing Baillie Gifford of “greenwashing”, with authors calling on the firm to divest from fossil fuels.

After the Hamas terror attacks on 7 October and Israel’s attacks in Gaza, the group joined calls from Art Workers for Palestine Scotland to divest from all companies linked to Israeli cybersecurity, including Meta and Amazon.

FFB issued a letter shortly before the start of the Hay festival on 23 May, and by Friday afternoon the organisers had announced they were suspending their relationship with Baillie Gifford. Charlotte Church, the singer, Nish Kumar, the comedian, and Labour politicians Shami Chakrabarti and Dawn Butler had all cancelled plans to speak.

It is understood that as many as 30 speakers told the festival they would pull out, threatening the viability of the event, after receiving an email from FFB saying that there would be pro-Palestinian protesters at the event.

“These groups as a whole won’t be able to come into your events without buying tickets, but they might have associates or friends attending Hay, who they can make aware to give support to you,” the email said. “They’ve also said they would try to offer support at the entry to your event if they are given details of when and where it’s happening.”

skip past newsletter promotion

after newsletter promotion

Some authors interpreted this as an implicit threat, it is understood. When the Edinburgh international book festival dropped Baillie Gifford last week, its director Jenny Niven said that “pressure on our team has become intolerable”. The festival’s chair, Allan Little, said the team could not deliver a “safe and sustainable” festival with the “constant threat of disruption from activists”.

Joan Smith, the author of What Will Survive, was not one of those authors, but she said: “This is, in some way, a weaponisation of shame, because if you aren’t seen to be publicly supporting the protests then you are made to feel like a bad person.”

FFB rejected the claim that its emails seemed threatening. Yara Rodrigues Fowler, one of the organisers, said: “We always made it very clear that authors were entirely free to make their own decisions and that ignoring our call to action would not burn any bridges. We have never recommended any action targeting authors and we have never attempted to pressure any authors that haven’t signed our statement.”

Many of the authors involved in FFB, such as Grace Blakeley, are upset at how the campaign has been characterised. Polly Atkin, a poet and bookseller who spoke at Hay, supports FFB and read a work by the Gaza poet Haidar al-Ghazali before her event. “There is a false premise that Baillie Gifford money is the only way to fund a festival. It’s a panic response. I used to run a programme at Kendal Mountain festival that we couldn’t get sponsorship for. It was a tiny amount of money but we lost the sponsorship and had to stop. I know exactly what it’s like – it’s terrible. But I don’t think the only way to make a festival run is to take money from investment companies.”

Scottish writers, including Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Alexander McCall Smith and Jenny Colgan, and the poet Liz Lochhead, wrote an open letter to the Scotsman last week, saying they also called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and for the release of hostages but that they were “profoundly concerned about the fate of the UK’s book festivals and other cultural events” in light of the protests.

Adrian Turpin, creative and strategic director of the Wigtown festival in Dumfries and Galloway, which is sponsored by Baillie Gifford, said: “We are in danger of getting to a position where millions of pounds over the next decade is just going to be removed from the arts and culture.

“I think if we really felt that this was going to change anything, this direct action against soft-target book festivals, then maybe that would be justifiable. But I don’t this will have any effect.

“I’m exceptionally gloomy about what this is going to mean. I’ve heard people say ‘we need to have a discussion about new models for funding these things’ … I don’t know what these new models are. It feels like a mentality of ‘burn the whole world down and it’s your problem making sure that it works’.”

Labour MP Dawn Butler and author Grace Blakeley are among those who have withdrawn from scheduled appearances at Hay festival over its sponsorship by investment management firm Baillie Gifford.

Butler said in a video posted to X that she was withdrawing from the literary festival because Baillie Gifford is “involved directly or indirectly in technology and arms in Israel”.

Writers Noreen Masud and AK Blakemore, climate activist Tori Tsui and comedian Ania Magliano have also withdrawn from the festival, which begins on Thursday. Blakemore said that the publishing industry “shouldn’t be used to garner prestige by companies that profit from fossil fuels or the ongoing assault on Palestine”.

More than 600 writers and publishing industry professionals have signed a statement by campaign group Fossil Free Books (FFB) which demands Baillie Gifford “divest from the fossil fuel industry and from companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide”.

FFB said that it fully supports authors who “wish to take action at Baillie Gifford-sponsored festivals, as well as those who withdraw or decline their invitations”. As well as Hay, the company also sponsors Edinburgh international book festival, Cheltenham literature festival and the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction. Edinburgh book festival has confirmed that both Blakemore and Masud were invited but neither will be appearing.

“Like so many charities, we are operating amongst huge financial uncertainty. Sponsorship is a complex ethical space to navigate,” said Hay CEO Julie Finch in a statement. “In all of our funding agreements, we maintain editorial independence.”

According to FFB’s statement, Baillie Gifford has between £2.5bn and £5bn invested in the fossil fuel industry and nearly £10bn in companies with links to Israel’s defence, tech and cybersecurity industries, including Nvidia, Amazon and Alphabet.

Baillie Gifford said that it is a large investor in multinational technology companies such as Amazon, Nvidia and Meta “that have commercial dealings with the state of Israel that are tiny in the context of their overall business”. It also said that it is a small investor in three companies identified as having “connections to the Israeli state or activities in the occupied territories”, and that Baillie Gifford has been “engaging” with those companies.

“We are not a significant fossil fuel investor,” the company added. “Only 2% of our clients’ money is invested in companies with some business related to fossil fuels. This compares to the market average of 11%”.

skip past newsletter promotion

after newsletter promotion

Anna Frame, communications director at Canongate Books, who recently joined the Edinburgh festival’s board, said in a post on X that finding festival funding is “hard” and that the money “has to come from somewhere”. Baillie Gifford “are one of the relatively few companies with cash that are also at least trying to do better”.

“We desperately need a broader discussion about the abysmal state of arts funding in this country,” she added. “If you feel the better option is for these festivals to close down than take money from BG, that’s a fair position to take, though I disagree.”

In 1968 the books pages of the French newspaper Le Monde excitedly praised an uncompromising new novel, Bound to Violence, going on to salute its author as one of “the rare intellectuals of international stature presented to the world by Black Africa”.

The newspaper’s words, written in tribute to the young Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem, sound condescending today. Back then, however, the intended compliment was genuine and many European critics soon agreed: the publication of Ouologuem’s strange novel really did mark the arrival of a major new talent.

But the literary world can be brutal, and particularly so for a young African novelist living in Paris who was attempting a fresh twist on conventional storytelling.

Fellow African writers began to express shock at Ouologuem’s harsh parody of his own culture. Three years later damaging accusations of plagiarism had also emerged, including a public skirmish with Graham Greene, which ended Ouologuem’s short career. He retreated into the life of a recluse, returned to Mali and died in 2017, having never published again.

Now, 50 years after this scandal, Penguin Classics is to bring out a new English edition of Bound to Violence in a bid to rehabilitate the gifted author and introduce him to new readers.

“I was so exhilarated when I read this book,” said Penguin editor Ka Bradley. “It’s the history of an imaginary African empire called Nakem and whole centuries are dealt with in just a paragraph or two. It’s dizzying.”

When Ouologuem’s satire first came out in French, as Le Devoir du Violence, it won the prestigious Prix Renaudot award and earned him worldwide interest, with translation rights swiftly snapped up in Britain, West Germany, Italy and the US.

The problems began when an anonymous article in the Times Literary Supplement alerted Greene to a few similarities with his own 1934 novel, It’s a Battlefield. One offending passage in Bound to Violence described a short love scene inside the home of an English Communist that also features in Greene’s story. The dialogue and the setting, with a pink bedroom door and silk bedspreads “like rose petals”, are alike, especially in the 1971 English translation by Ralph Manheim. A further resemblance to sections of André Schwarz-Bart’s book The Last of the Just, including the opening sentences of both novels, were also identified.

When Greene complained to the book’s French publisher, Editions de Seuil, it asked Ouologuem for rewrites to certain pages. Schwarz-Bart, in contrast, was not so bothered, and in fact regarded the use of quotations from his book as “quite thrilling”, according to Bradley. Ouologuem did not comply with his publisher’s request for changes.

“It seems to me this book created such strong feelings because of its very satirical and even sarcastic style. It spares no one and people don’t like that,” said Bradley. “It’s pugnacious, although funny with it, and that kind of humour can really alarm people, creating a backlash. The book was quite a modernist text, with quotations from the Bible and the Qur’an, as well as sections that drew on African oral traditions. Graham Greene was the only one who really objected.”

skip past newsletter promotion

after newsletter promotion

Bradley suspects that Ouologuem’s youth and ethnicity were held against him: “He was 28 when he won the prize, and there was a sense that some Europeans were wondering just how a young black man could have written this. Some more kindly felt that Ouologuem couldn’t have been expected to know you weren’t supposed to plagiarise like that, whereas I believe it was deliberate. He was writing a kind of pushback against the western literary canon.”

Ouologuem’s style could be likened to Kurt Vonnegut’s work, Bradley suggests: “You know you’re in a wildly ambitious fictional world. There is almost a feeling of collage in the later sections of the book, where the narrative is much more focused on a set of individuals and on the lead character, the Paris-educated Raymond Spartacus Kassoumi.”

Penguin’s decision to republish the work follows an American edition brought out recently by Other Press. It also comes in the wake of its successful publication of an acclaimed novel that draws on the story of Ouologuem’s ruined reputation. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s French book, The Most Secret Memory of Men, which won the Prix Goncourt in 2021, mirrors Ouologuem’s story, telling of an African writer in Paris who is damaged by literary misunderstandings and allegations of plagiarism.

The Penguin Classics reissue of Bound to Violence, published in Britain in March, comes, like the American edition, with a new introduction by the Malian scholar Chérif Keïta, which looks at the novel in a wider context. Manheim’s original translation has been preserved with limited tweaks to outdated language. “There are bits of this book that are really unnerving, but then you don’t read a book not to be occasionally unsettled,” said Bradley. “I don’t expect all my political views to be reflected either, but it is a major artistic achievement.”