The 12 Most Famous Banned

Books Of All Time

Whether it was a scandalous story of sex or simply taking issue with a talking pig,
many people have found reasons to ban some of the world's best and most famous
books. Court cases have been fought, books have been burned, and fatwas have
been issued. Discover the fascinating histories of 12 famous books that have been
banned in countries from the USA to the former USSR.
For regular updates on the best of literature, travel and culture, follow The Culture
Trip onFacebook and Twitter, or sign up to our global newsletter.
Lady Chatterley's Lover cover | © Penguin Books

Lady Chatterley's Lover - DH Lawrence

'Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the 'Chatterley' ban and the Beatles' first LP.'
Phillip Larkin was not the only person for whom Lady Chatterley's Lover marked a
seismic change in society. First published privately in Italy in 1928, Penguin's
decision to publish the original explicit text in 1960 led to perhaps the most famous
trial in literary history. EM Forster defended it in the dock, the prosecution famously
asked 'would you wish your wife or servants to read' it, and its eventual publication
saw it sell in the hundreds of thousands and help to bring in the sexual revolution of
the 1960s.
Brave New World cover | © Chatto and Windus
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

A cautionary tale of a world grown too used to artificial comfort built on exploitation,
censors of the unbrave old world found much in the book
unpalatable. Ireland banned it for what they saw as its comments against religion
and the traditional family, as well as its uses of strong language, and India went as
far as calling Huxley a 'pornographer' for his depiction of a world where recreational
sex was encouraged from a young age.
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller

Over thirty years of legal action, the frank sexuality of Henry Miller's musing on the
human condition made Tropic of Cancer an incredibly famous book, despite the
fact that few ever got the chance to read it. After all, who would not be curious
about a book described by a Pennsylvania judge as 'an open sewer, a pit of
putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity'?
This reputation, and the book's legal publication in the 1960s were a major
benchmark that all candidly sexual books published since could not exist without.
The Satanic Verses cover | © Vintage

The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

Although books had been banned before and after The Satanic Verses, but none
had led to their author having a death warrant put on the author's head. In fact, few
modern books have as bloody a publication history. As a result of this book,
Salman Rushdie had to go into hiding for an entire decade after Iran's Ayatollah
issued a fatwa, a fatwa that also led to the death of Rushdie's Japanese translator.
Decried by many in the Muslim world for its apparent blasphemy, it was burned in
the streets in Britain and around the Islamic world.
Lolita cover | © Penguin

Lolita - Vladmir Nabokov

A banned book whose reception has often obscured its actual content, many who
come to Lolita expecting to be horrified or titillated will find themselves
disappointed. A bitter-hearted satire on American values in the mid-20th century, its
few quasi-erotic passages are few and far between. That has not stopped its
controversial subject matter from finding it banned in the United Kingdom and the
usually liberal France in the fifties after one of the first tabloid morality panics where
launched upon it by the Sunday Express.
Ulysses cover | © Oxford University Press

Ulysses - James Joyce

Perhaps the most highbrow book around, many completely miss the masturbation
references in the 'Nausicaa' chapter of James Joyce's masterwork Ulysses, and
many more do not even reach as far as that chapter, getting lost in the famously
impenetrable prose. That did not stop the section from being declared obscene by
the courts after it featured in a literary journal. Perhaps censors found the whole
book so difficult to understand that they believed it could be peddling similar filth in
other passages, for the whole novel was banned in the US and in Britain for most of
the 1930s, with the United States Postal Service burning copies sent in the mail.
All Quiet on the Western Front cover | © Vintage

All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

Although many books found themselves in the Nazi book-burning bonfires of 1933,
including seminal writers and thinkers like Kafka, Thomas Mann and Albert
Einstein, none were as critical of wartime Germany as All Quiet on the Western
Front. Seen as unpatriotic by the National Socialists and even a number of non-
Nazi aligned military personnel and writers, what these groups and individuals
disliked about the book is exactly what makes it so compelling an account of the
true horrors of warfare.
Animal Farm | © Penguin

Animal Farm - George Orwell

Although it will come as no surprise that Orwell's thinly veiled satire of the
brutalities of communism was banned in the Stalinist USSR, its status as a banned
book has lasted well past the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is still banned in Cuba and
North Korea (for the same reasons as it was banned by the Soviets), and has also
been prohibited in Kenya for its criticism of corruption and, more bizarrely by UAE
schools for its depiction of a talking pig which was deemed as contrary to Muslim
values.
The Catcher in the Rye cover | © Little, Brown and Company

The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye has the fascinating double distinction of being both the
most banned and the second most taught book in American schools. Its defenders
see it as the definitive look at the frustrations and ennui of teenage life, whereas its
prosecutors have seen it as causing everything from murders to suicides to the
spreading of communist ideas in America. What censors have failed to realize,
however, is that banning a book due to its depiction of teenage rebellion is just
going to make rebellious teenagers seek it out even more.
The Grapes of Wrath cover | © Penguin Modern Classics

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinback

Perhaps the highest praise an author can receive, John Steinbeck's depiction of the
harsh working conditions in Depression-era California was so brutal that it was
banned in the county the Joad family moves to, despite historians confirming that
Steinbeck's portrayal was true-to-life. Local officials in Kern County convinced
workers to burn the book in a number of photo opportunities, ironically further
enforcing the manipulation experienced by migrant workers in the area that
Steinbeck portrays so blisteringly well in The Grapes of Wrath.
The Well of Loneliness - Radclyffe Hall
Emblematic of just how repugnant most found homosexuality in the early 20th
century, Radclyffe Hall's lesbian romance was at the center of an obscenity trial
despite featuring no erotic scenes save a brief moment where it is only implied that
the two figures may have spent the night together. No matter how chaste the
content of the book, censors found a book written by a lesbian and featuring
lesbian characters too obscene for publication. Although countered by literary
luminaries including the Woolfs, EM Forster, and TS Eliot, the campaign
against The Well of Loneliness remains a homophobic stain on Britain's literary
history.
Copy of American Psycho with Restricted Sticker | © Picador

American Psycho - Brett Easton Ellis

Although American Psycho slowly moves towards being a satire, a reader has to
read through hundred of pages of eye gouging, breast slicing and nail gunning
before that becomes in anyway apparent. No wonder, then, that the book has been
widely banned, with many other countries selling the book shrink-wrapped with an
age-restricted label. Even in places where it is not banned, more squeamish writers
may find themselves wishing that it had been too.
By Samuel Spencer
Samuel Spencer is a London-based freelance writer who has written extensively
about high and lowbrow culture both in print and online for publications including
The Telegraph, NME and Penguin Books. He also blogs about everything from
Michelangelo to Madonna atSamuel Spencer Writes.

http://theculturetrip.com/north-america/articles/the-12-most-famous-banned-books-of-all-
time/?utm_source=emails&utm_medium=featured&utm_campaign=260415northamericaliter
ature