There are no figures yet, save for 520,000 mentions on Google, but in terms of the enthusiasm of its audience, the impact on the local community and the coverage in Gulf-based newspapers, the inaugural Emirates Airlines International Festival of Literature (EAIFL) was a success.

The first such event in the region—indeed, the very concept had to be explained by Isobel Abulhoul, director of the local Magrudy's bookstore chain and the instigator of the three-day festival—brought together more than 60 authors from across the English-speaking and Arab worlds who participated in more than 50 events. After three days of public sessions, plus a parallel Fringe Festival involving 900 schoolchildren, based in and around the Intercontinental Hotel in Dubai's Festival City, many of the authors spent time in local schools and colleges, teaching writing skills and answering questions, many of them concerning the role of women.

Held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Majid bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, chairman of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, whose stated ambition is to eradicate illiteracy in the Arab world, EAIFL mixed culture and commerce, featuring among others Jung Chang, Frank McCourt, Karin Slaughter, Terry Brooks, Louis de Bernières, Kate Mosse, Philippa Gregory, Claudia Roden and Wilbur Smith alongside Arab authors such as Rajaa al-Sanea, author of Girls of Riyadh, the first Saudi chick lit novel; Sahar el-Mougy, the Egyptian author and academic; and Iraqi poet Fadhil al-Azzawi.

And of course there was Margaret Atwood, EAIFL's literary bill-topper. Ten days before the proceedings were due to open, she had pulled out over the supposed banning of a romantic comedy by Geraldine Bedell, The Gulf Between Us, which features a gay sheikh. A naïve e-mail, sent six months earlier by Abulhoul to Bedell, explaining that she didn't feel the novel was entirely appropriate for the festival, was suddenly leaked to the press; the story ran in the London Times, which reported—incorrectly as it turned out—that the novel had been banned in Dubai and beyond. Penguin, Bedell's U.K. publisher, appeared to spin the story and Atwood, International PEN vice-president, announced she couldn't visit a country that banned writers or support an event that apparently condoned such actions.

Only Bedell and her book hadn't been banned—indeed, the Dubai chain Magrudy's Bookshops will be stocking it when it is published next month. When Atwood realized her mistake, she agreed to take part, via videolink, in a PEN debate on censorship. At the 11th hour, she also decided to go ahead with a previously announced one-on-one interview with this writer, again by videolink.

Disappointingly, the debate—chaired by Eugene Schoulgin, international secretary of International PEN—didn't even touch on the Bedell affair, though the discussion did underline the very real problems encountered by writers in some parts of the Middle East. Al-Sanea, one of the panelists, casually revealed that she had received death threats in the wake of Girls of Riyadh, which was originally published in Lebanon, then downloaded and imported into Saudi Arabia, forcing the censors eventually to sanction its publication there. (It is now published in more than a score of languages; the author is currently completing a post-grad dental qualification in Chicago.) Put in such a context, the Bedell affair is a tempest in an Arab teapot—an attempt at self-promotion that could yet backfire on both author and publisher, which is poised to open an office in the Middle East.

Pressed in the interview that followed the debate, Atwood failed to explain why she had acted so precipitately, but acknowledged that she'd heard the words “ban” and “censorship,” and “rallied round a flag that wasn't there.” She observed that “an independent festival has to exercise its own right and judgment—it's not the same as banning a book,” and agreed that her presence in Dubai would have offered encouragement to women who battle to make their voices heard and get their books published.