10 BANNED AND CHALLENGED BOOKS EVERYONE SHOULD READ

words by DEBORAH DRENOFCI

The books of bestselling Irish novelist Sally Rooney will no longer be sold in the UK. The author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends pledged to give the royalties and earnings from her UK sales to Palestine Action (PA), a direct-action network proscribed as a terrorist organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000. Because Rooney chose to support the network financially, her publisher can no longer pass on her UK earnings without risking prosecution under the same legislation, and has withdrawn her books from sale. This news makes us stop and think. To this day, can books be challenged not only for their content, but also for their writer’s standpoints?

Historically, institutions and those in power have been intimidated by the sway of these mystical objects, full of pages and truth. Books are pathways to acknowledging life, and all it brings and takes from us. The one who reads realises early on that he is not alone in his solitude, his fears, or the deep feelings that cannot be named but merely described in page-long paragraphs that only make sense once the page is turned. He who reads learns, through the words of a stranger, to listen better, to understand that life has different characters, and to know what to say to each of them. Books have always been, and continue to be, vessels of power. But because not everyone likes sharing, and not everyone can stand the idea of such noble, free power being held within pages, books are still challenged or banned today. What those who ban them fail to realise is that every ban only proves the book’s point. We looked into which books have been banned or challenged over the years, and why. Here are ten. You might know some of them already. Nevertheless, each one deserves to be read.

all images via PINTEREST

FAHRENHEIT 451
RAY BRADBURY

Fahrenheit 451 is the perfect book to start this list, because in the book itself, books are banned. In a future America, firemen don’t put out fires; they burn books. Guy Montag is one of them, until a curious young neighbour makes him question his job and the hollow society around him. The irony is that the book was censored too. From 1967, a school edition quietly removed swear words and other passages, and Bradbury only found out years later. It has also been challenged in US schools for its language and for a scene where the Bible is burned.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD 
BY HARPER LEE

To Kill A Mockingbird is a special book. The reason for this is that the story unfolds through a child’s eyes. In 1930s young Scout Finch lives in Alabama with her brother Jem and her father, a lawyer named Atticus Finch trying to defend Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of raping a white women. Through Scout’s innocent, yet honest perspective, the novel exposes themes of racism and injustice. The book has been challenged since the 1960s, being labeled as “immoral” for racial slurs and themes of rape. In 2017 it was pulled from the eighth-grade curriculum in some parts of Mississippi, and dropped from the required reading lists in other schools in the US.

1984
BY GEORGE ORWELL

No wonder Orwell’s work made it onto this list. His dystopian novel follows Winston Smith, who lives in Oceania, a totalitarian state where the Party, led by Big Brother, watches everyone and punishes “thoughtcrime.” Winston starts a forbidden love affair, rebels, and suffers the Party’s punishment. The book warns how power manipulates and controls truth. It was banned in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s for its critique of Stalinism. In the US, it was challenged in Jackson County, Florida in 1981 for being “pro-communist” and for its sexual content.

THE HANDMAID’S TALE
BY MARGARET ATWOOD

The Handmaid’s Tale remains one of the most banned and challenged books to this day. Atwood invites the reader into Gilead, a theocratic regime where fertile women are forced to become Handmaids and bear children for powerful men. The book follows Offred as she survives the system and remembers her life before it. It has been challenged for sexual content, violence and its feminist themes, and has been seen as anti-Christian. PEN America counted it among the most banned books of the 2025–2026 school year, with 21 bans.

ALL BOYS AREN’T BLUE
BY GEORGE M.JOHNSON

In this memoir, Johnson tells the story of growing up Black and queer in New Jersey and Virginia, from childhood moments of feeling different to identity, family and first sexual experiences. It was written for young adults, as the book Johnson wished they had had as a teenager. Since 2021, it has been among the most challenged books in the US and has been removed from school libraries in several states, including Florida, for its LGBTQ+ content and descriptions of sex and sexual abuse.

THE HATE U GIVE
BY ANGIE THOMAS

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighbourhood where she lives and the wealthy, mostly white private school she attends. When she witnesses a police officer fatally shoot her unarmed childhood friend Khalil, she has to decide whether to speak out. In 2017, Katy, Texas temporarily pulled it from school libraries over its language, and in 2018 a police union in Charleston, South Carolina called for it to be removed from a school reading list, calling it anti-police. It is still banned in a number of US school districts today.

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER
BY STEPHEN CHBOSKY

Charlie is a shy, sensitive freshman who writes letters to an anonymous friend about his first year of high school: new friendships, first love, parties, and the trauma they have buried. It’s a coming-of-age story many teenagers have recognised themselves in. It has been challenged since its release in 1999 for its sexual content, drug use, homosexuality and themes of suicide and abuse. It was the second most challenged book in US libraries in 2025, according to the American Library Association.

THE BELL JAR
SYLVIA PLATH

Plath’s only novel follows Esther Greenwood, a gifted young woman with a summer internship at a New York magazine in the 1950s. As society’s expectations of women close in on her ambitions, she sinks into depression and is hospitalised. The story is semi-autobiographical. It has been challenged for its frank treatment of suicide and sexuality, and for criticising marriage and motherhood. In the late 1970s, it was removed from schools in Warsaw, Indiana.

ANIMAL FARM
GEORGE ORWELL

Orwell twice, and for good reason. In this allegory, the animals of Manor Farm overthrow their human farmer, only for the pigs to become the new tyrants. It’s a sharp satire of the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s rule. Before it was even published, several British publishers rejected it in 1944, since the UK was allied with the Soviet Union at the time. It was banned across the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, and in 2002 it was removed from schools in the United Arab Emirates for its talking pigs, which officials said went against Islamic values.

THE COLOR PURPLE
ALICE WALKER

Told through letters, the novel follows Celie, a poor Black woman in the early 20th-century American South who survives abuse by her father and her husband. Through her bond with other women, especially the singer Shug Avery, she finds love, independence and her own voice. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and it was challenged as early as 1984 in Oakland, California. It has remained one of the most challenged books in the US ever since, for its sexual violence, explicit language and same-sex love.