As the title suggests, 120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature by Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald and Dawn B. Sova (second edition, 2011) is a comprehensive analysis of 120 books that have been "banned, suppressed, or censored for political, religious, sexual, or social reasons across 20 centuries and in many nations" along with a detailed censorship history of each entry followed by a list of further readings.
The 120 books in the four categories of suppressed literature have been banned over 2,000 years and include contemporary fiction like Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
Most of the banned books are well-known titles and are read to this day.
In India, books have been periodically banned, pulled off the shelves, and pulped—at times by the publishers themselves—to suit political and religious interests. There have been protest marches, acts of book burning, and vandalism.
The more you ban something, the more people are likely to go looking for it. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of literary censorship. Banning a book is the best way to ensure that more people read it. It draws your attention to the "offending" book which otherwise you might have never heard of or never intended to read. The ban is soon forgotten, but not the book.
Fortunately, the internet has proved to be a sensible counterweight to the uninformed debate on banning of books. You can download and read the victimised books even as those who force censorship on the reading public are arguing about the merits of the ban. Modern writers whose books are banned in some quarters or regions of the world have found a way to get back—they make their books available online and often free of cost—proving the old adage that the pen continues to be mightier than the sword.
Fortunately, the internet has proved to be a sensible counterweight to the uninformed debate on banning of books. You can download and read the victimised books even as those who force censorship on the reading public are arguing about the merits of the ban. Modern writers whose books are banned in some quarters or regions of the world have found a way to get back—they make their books available online and often free of cost—proving the old adage that the pen continues to be mightier than the sword.
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