Controversial books: Read summaries, excerpts and commentary

What makes John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men controversial?

Why Nazi and Soviet authorities banned Kafka’s novel?

Read the controversial poems by Shel Silverstein deemed by some parents and teachers too controversial for children

Condemned by the French government and the Catholic Church: Read the controversial passages from Voltaire’s Candide (1759)

Read the once-banned words behind a wave of suicides in Europe

Ancient controversial advice: Why you should play tricks on him and when to offer your body as a “thank-you”

Why Gustave Flaubert was put on trial for Madame Bovary?

Black Code: One of the earliest and most important legal documents on slavery in the West

A girl seeks religion while dealing with puberty: her first bra, first period, and first crush. Was the book really anti-Christian?

Why was the 1950s French novel banned? It begins with O’s lover sexually training her: She is stripped, whipped and “gangbanged”

The book that inspired revolutions globally brought to life in 35 historical photos

Understanding Voltaire’s view on race and slavery through the eyes of Candide

Why the heroines of Madame Bovary, The Awakening and Anna Karenina commit suicide?

Photos show how a 1964 text laid the foundations of Islamic terrorism

Read passages from books that were challenged in court