50
votes
Accepted
Why was The Call of the Wild banned?
It, and other London works, promoted individualism and attacked totalitarianism.
Let's go back to the plot of The Call of the Wild. Rereading it, there are a few main incidents that jump out at me as ...
- 5,864
38
votes
Why was The Call of the Wild banned?
Because of the author's socialist views.
From Banned Books Week:
Generally hailed as Jack London’s best work, The Call of the Wild is commonly challenged for its dark tone and bloody violence. ...
- 71k
24
votes
Accepted
Why was the book Animal Farm banned in non-communist countries?
The UAE banned it because:
"it contained text or images that goes against Islamic values, most notably the occurrence of an anthropomorphic, talking pig." - from Wikipedia
Vietnam has the book ...
- 1,303
17
votes
What was the earlier expose of racism that Twain wrote that was censored?
I think that this references the same incident described by Shelley Fisher Fishkin in her essay Mark Twain, Race, and Huckleberry Finn. Fishkin notes that in Huckleberry Finn, Twain "explored ...
- 8,861
12
votes
What occult references caused The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to be banned in the Soviet Union?
Searching for Doyle's works banned in USSR in 1929 yields nothing about The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, save for this question and one comment on LiveJournal. However, searching the Russian ...
- 8,365
11
votes
Accepted
Has the text of Premchand's banned short-story collection Soz-e-Watan survived?
The book itself in Urdu seems to be fairly readily accessible.
Penguin Random House publish Premchand: The Complete Short Stories in four volumes which includes the five stories from Soz e Watan as ...
- 18.6k
9
votes
Ray Bradbury says Fahrenheit 451 isn't about censorship. Is he right?
You can make an argument for anything, really. It just depends on whether it's a good argument.
I'd argue that the common interpretation of Fahrenheit 451 as being about government censorship isn't a ...
- 4,732
7
votes
Accepted
Are Gutenberg books illegal to sell in Germany?
As the page Court Order to Block Access from Germany explains, the blocking has to do with differences between the EU and the USA related to the rules governing copyright:
in Germany, copyright lasts ...
- 44k
6
votes
Accepted
Has The Danish Girl novel been banned in any countries?
I'm pretty sure the answer is
No.
From checking the internet, it seems that the film was but the book wasn't.
Some sources that might help:
Books banned by governments- Wikipedia
Most commonly ...
- 6,198
5
votes
Ray Bradbury says Fahrenheit 451 isn't about censorship. Is he right?
Have you been to a library recently? In olden times, libraries had books. Lots of books. That was how you learned things.
When newspapers and magazines came along, libraries added newspapers and ...
- 1,217
4
votes
Accepted
Which two Indian states lifted the ban on The Da Vinci Code in or after 2006?
The seven states which banned The Da Vinci Code are listed as follows with linked news sources (the date in each case is the date of the linked article, not the date of the ban):
Nagaland (24 May ...
- 71k
4
votes
Until what year was Machiavelli's The Prince banned in England?
Tl;DR: The English press censorship regime in the Tudor and Stuart periods was not based on a list of banned works, and so the question has no definite answer.
In this answer I’m following Cyndia ...
- 53.5k
4
votes
Has the text of Premchand's banned short-story collection Soz-e-Watan survived?
To add to the nice answer by Spagirl, not only has the text of Premchand's banned short story collection Soz-e Watan survived, these stories have now been collected and published (in the original Urdu)...
- 919
4
votes
Accepted
How did the Strugatsky Brothers' experience with Soviet literary publishing censorship reflect on their books?
This subject is covered in most detail in the book "Limping Fate". Unfortunately, there is no English translation yet. This book is written in a form of two interleaved novels (not unlike ...
- 565
4
votes
Accepted
You can enter prison for reading in Belarus, why?
This probably belong in politics.se rather than here, but here's what I was able to determine. The original coverage is in Belarusian here which Google translate renders as:
A pensioner with books by ...
- 3,005
4
votes
Accepted
In George Orwell's Burmese Days, what word is the censored "b--s" supposed to be?
Almost certainly "buggers". Several other possible options ("bastards", "balls") are used later in the book without bowdlerisation.
'Now, you damned swab, will you take that back?' 'No, I will not....
- 4,713
4
votes
Why was My Uncle Napoleon banned in Iran?
Here are some excerpts from Azar Nafisi's introduction to a new edition of the novel (published, and slightly edited, on The Guardian's website, 5/13/2006) that may indicate why it was banned by the ...
- 5,930
4
votes
Ray Bradbury says Fahrenheit 451 isn't about censorship. Is he right?
To me the censorship angle is there on the surface, but when you look more deeply, if you wanted to argue that it wasn't about censorship, the book itself does support that:
He does clearly say in ...
- 187
3
votes
What ticked off Soviet bosses about "Inhabited Island"?
I don't think anybody can have a definite answer here.
My understanding is that the same Mak Sim portrayed by someone else (say Adamov of the previous generation, or Kazantzev, or even Efremov) would ...
- 1,002
3
votes
Ray Bradbury says Fahrenheit 451 isn't about censorship. Is he right?
Firemen were analogous to The Banner in The Fountainhead - they didn't create the problem, they just capitalized on existing desires. They destroyed books because people wanted them destroyed. Firemen ...
2
votes
Censorship reaction to Moravia's "La mascherata"
In 1954, Moravia was interviewed by two journalists from The Paris Review. With the usual caveats concerning personal reminiscences, he gave a quite detailed account of the censors' response to La ...
- 8,861
1
vote
What ticked off Soviet bosses about "Inhabited Island"?
If I recall correctly, Erik Simon wrote in the afterword of his german translation that the novel was deemed too political, especially the criticism of nationalism and mass media. The publishing house ...
- 129
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible