A copy of the cover of the Negerboek (direct translation: Negro Book, originally titled: Book of Negroes) was set on fire at the slavery monument in Amsterdam on Wednesday afternoon.

Roy Groenberg, Chairperson of the Foundation for Honour and Reparations  for Victims of Slavery in Surinam, says the book is insulting and hurtful. In the presence of 30 - mainly Surinamese - protesters, a copy of the cover was lit as a symbolic gesture.

Within the Surinamese community, a debate has begun about the Dutch translation of the novel by Canadian author Lawrence Hill. In the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, the book is titled Someone knows my name. Mr Groenberg would have prefered the Dutch publisher to choose a different title for the translation.

In a reaction, the Writers' Union of Canada decried the decision by an organization of Dutch-Surinamese to burn the best-selling Canadian novel.

" The burning of books represents censorship at its worst," says Greg Hollingshead, Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada. "While we recognize the sensitivity over the use of the word 'Negro' in the book's title, the Book of Negroes is a real document and Mr. Hill uses it deliberately to underscore the plight of African Americans being shipped from New York to Nova Scotia in 1783."

The novel tells the story of a young African girl who is taken to America as a slave and later freed by the British. She - along with 3000 other people - is entered into the historical Book of Negroes. The book, an actual historical document, is an archive of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States in order to resettle in Nova Scotia.

Organisers of the book burning promised to hold another book burning outside the publisher Ailantus in Amsterdam if the name was not changed.

(nc/ae)

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