Fifty Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey fans in New Zealand will continue to have unrestricted access to the controversial trilogy following a decision by the chief censor.

The Chief Censor Office of Film and Literature classification has ruled to keep the sale of the book available without an age restriction.

Random House New Zealand managing director Karen Ferns said the decision was a victory for common sense and freedom of expression:

To have restricted publication would have put New Zealand out of step with comparable democratic countries such as the UK, Australia, Canada and the United States.

Books with similar levels of explicit sexual content have been available for years.

The book was given an M certificate which is an advisory 16 rating.

Fans of a best-selling erotic novel face a premature end to their reading pleasure because the second and third instalments of the trilogy have been withdrawn from the UAE bookshops.

Employees at some of the country's biggest bookstores say all three books of the Fifty Shades trilogy, by the British author EL James, were available until about a month ago, when there was a sudden withdrawal of the final two books in the series - Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed.

However, the first book in the series, Fifty Shades of Grey , remains on sale.

A saleswoman at Magrudy's in Abu Dhabi's Al Wadha Mall said they were still waiting for books two and three. They're banned. We don't know when we will get them, she said.

At Book World by Kinokuniya, in Dubai Mall, a saleswoman said the store was not allowed to sell the final instalments.

Virgin Megastore, which has a large display of the first book in Abu Dhabi Mall, said the second and third books have not been granted approval in the UAE at the moment . Iain Paul Martin, Virgin's regional senior books buyer, said all the store's books required an approval certificate from the department of media content at the NMC. In this case, books 2 and 3 of the Grey trilogy have not been granted the certificate, he said.

But strangely the National Media Council (NMC), the government authority overseeing censorship, has rigorously denied imposing any such ban, claiming that stores deciding not to sell the book have decided to do so of their own accord. Ibrahim Al Abed, the director general of the NMC, said the council had nothing to do with these things . We do not censor books. It's up to the bookshops who can decide to ban the books, he said.

Such is the power of the media hype Fifty Shades of Grey has become an overnight hit with young women and even teenagers who are reading it quite openly with none of the embarrassment which would normally have accompanied such a book before, even including most of the Australian women's swimming team after discovering it in a service station on their way to the Games from Manchester, presumably alongside other novels and within sight of children.

It is not just EL James and her own perverse imagination which are subverting public morals so dramatically; it is the whole of the communications industry which is driving e marketing to an audience who have become gradually desensitised over time by films and TV programmes targeted often specifically at the 16-34 age group, and which increasingly feature sexually explicit material and bondage.

Sexually provocative music lyrics and videos by Madonna, Lady Gaga and Rihanna's S&M are popular with teens and children. Retailers of bondage gear are also making a killing it seems with reports that the book has led to a surge in the sale of whips, handcuffs and other instruments of torture.

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