Books Without Limits

Out of the Top 100 books of the 20th Century as listed by the Radcliff Publishing Course, 42 are or have been on the banned or challenged book list.

The 42 Banned or Challenged Books from the Radcliff Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century:

• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
(challenged due to language and sexual
references)
• Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
(banned and challenged numerous times over the years for being anti white, obscene, language, vulgarity,
content, sexually explicit, violent, blasphemy, moral issues, and more)
• The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
(banned or challenged for language, vulgarity, taking the lord’s name in vain, sexual references)
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
(banned or challenged for use of the word nigger, for promoting racial segregation, for racial themes, for language)
• The Color Purple, Alice Walker
(banned or challenged for sexual and social explicitness, rough language, violence, racial and reglious issues)
• Ulysses, James Joyce
(Burned in US and other countries)
• Beloved, Toni Morrison
(Banned and challenged for violence and sexual material)
• The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
(Banned or challenged due to violence, sexual content, racism and demoralizing humans)
• 1984, George Orwell
(banned or challenged for being procommunist and sexually explicit)
• Lolita, Vladmir Nabokov
(banned or challenged for obscenity)
• Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
(banned or challenged for profanity, lack of patriotism on the part of the author, blasphemy, indecency)
• Catch-22, Joseph Heller
(banned or challenged for sexual reference)
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
(banned or challenged for a variety of variation son the theme of lacking in moral content and promoting
promiscuity)
• The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
(burned in Nazi bonfires, banned in several US cities)
• As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
(banned or challenged for obscenity, abortion references and sexual content)
• A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
(banned in several US cities)
• Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
(banned in several US cities)
• Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
(banned or challenged for sexual explicitness and language)
• Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
(banned or challenged for violence and vulgarity)
• Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
(banned or challenged for racial issues and obscenity)
• Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
(banned or challenged for issues of race)
• Native Son, Richard Wright
(banned or challenged for language, violance, sex, profanity)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
(banned or challenged for encouraging criminal behavior, corrupting youth and containing passages of bestiality,
violence, torture, dismemberment, death, and depraved acts)
• Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
(this book has been banned or challenged in numorous places, but is noteworthy for being burned in North Dakota
as late as 1973)
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
(banned overseas)
• The Call of the Wild, Jack London
(banned overseas, burned in Nazi bonfires in 1933)
• Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin
(banned or challenged for depicting rape, violence and hatred of women)
• All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
(challenged in several US cities)
• The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
(banned overseas, burned in Nazi bonfires 1933)
• Lady Chatterley’s Lover, DH Lawrence
(banned or challenged for sexual themes and moral issues)
• A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
(banned or challenged for language and profanity)
• In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
(banned or challenged for sex, violence and profanity)
• Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
(banned overseas, author et al sentenced to death by the Ayatolla Khommeni if he ever sets foot in his home
country again, book banned in many US cities)
• Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence
(challenged, never banned)
• Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
(challenged in several US cities)
• A Separate Peace, John Knowles
(banned or challenged for language and sexual content)
• Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
(banned for obscenity)
• Women in Love, DH Lawrence
(banned or challenged for obscenity)
• The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
(banned in Canada and Australia)
• Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
(banned as obscene)
• An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
(banned in Boston and burned in Nazi bonfires 1933)
• Rabbit, Run, John Updike
(banned or challenged for obscenity, indecency and sexuality)
(you can view the complete list of 100 greatest novels here)

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