Thursday, March 28, 2024

Banned Books That Changed the Tide of History

banned book - staff-picks-2012_page_1

*There have been several books in the past that faced a backlash by the masses and ended up being banned. Some were banned because they shocked the audience with their outlandish language and topics that were “too forward” for their times.

Other were banned because they seemed to promote conflict within an otherwise peaceful society

Here is a list of banned books from around the world. It’s up to you to decide if they were banned for the right reasons. Read on!

1. ulysses   Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce

Ulysses by James Joyce has crept through the line between being obscene and too genius since the time it was published in 1918-20. The novel displays a day of struggling artist Stephen Dedalus, a Jewish ad man Leopold Bloom, and his deceiving wife Molly Bloom.

The book was considered to be contraband in the United States for more than a decade till the time the landmark obscenity court case ‘The United States versus One Book Called Ulysses’ lifted the ban in 1933. The United Kingdom also banned it for obvious sexuality and imagery of different bodily functions.

Australia, on the other hand, kept banning and lifting the ban on-and-off until the mid-1950s.

the satanic verses

2.    The Satanic Verses (1988) by Salman Rushdie

The book called The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie discussed a story of two men filled with Islamic culture and their abilities (read: inabilities) to deal with the Western influences.

The publication of this novel provoked the Muslim masses for they felt that the book had blasphemous content portraying mannerisms of a person that they thought to be sculpted after the Prophet Muhammad.

The former spiritual leader of Iran threatened Rushdie enough for him to limit his public appearances, and be accompanied by bodyguards all the time.

The book has since been banned in many Muslim countries. These include India (Rushdie’s birthplace), Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, and South Africa.

alice's advernture in wonderland

3.    Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll

As regarded by the scholars as the height of the literary nonsense genre and on the other hand, welcomed by the children for its intense images and amusing whimsical storyline, it may have come as a surprise to you knowing that Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a banned book for different reasons!

Claiming that it expresses expletives and referred to masturbation and other sexual phenomena, a school in the U.S banned it in the year 1900. The book was also accused of diminishing the stature of certain authorities in the mind of children.

A province in China, three decades later, banned the same book for its awarding animals with human language. The governor was worried that this could be catastrophic for society.

During the 1960s, parents started to think that the movie encouraged the drug culture with its ‘overt’ references to psychedelic drug usage.

Despite the reason for which a particular book gets banned, it entices the audiences more to get their hand on the banned book and see what is in there which prompted an issue.

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