Index librorum prohibitorum

Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a list of books that good Catholics should not read, to protect their poor fragile souls from bad influence. The list was officially abolished by the Vatican in 1965. I don't know what effect this list had on the Catholics. For me it triggered curiosity. For a while, when I was a teen, it was my book-store shopping list. The Prohibitorum contained books by famous authors, for instance everything written by Jean Paul Sartre (most of his books are boring), Simone de Beauvoir (Sartre’s fiancée) and Emile Zola. Among well-known books on the list we find

o The Red and the Black by Stendhal
o Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
o Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
o Justine (The Misfortunes of Virtue) by Marquis de Sade

Note that Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler was never on the Prohibitorum! Anyway, it's a crap book. I read it when I was in high school, just by curiosity (I knew the chief librarian in my home town very well, and she ordered anything I asked for).

The Vatican is not alone when it comes to banning books. It’s no surprise that many books were banned by the German’s during the 2nd World War, by the apartheid regime in South Africa, and in the Soviet Union. More remarkable is the list of books that have been banned in the Western world, were the freedom of speech has been a basic principle. Books that have been banned in Western Europe and USA include

o Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (banned in Ireland for sexual content)
o Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (banned in USA as socialist propaganda)
o Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence (banned in USA and England for sexual content)
o Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (banned in France and England for sexual content)
o The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (banned in USA for sexual content)
o Ulysses by James Joyce (banned in USA for sexual content)
o Without a Stitch by Jens Bjørneboe (banned for sexual content)

Many good books worth reading on this list, I think, in particular the books by Steinbeck, Miller and Nabokov.