Eight books you are forbidden from reading

OVID WAS exiled by Augustus Caesar to a bleak village on the Black Sea. His satirical guide to seduction, “The Art of Love”, was banished from Roman libraries. In 1121 Peter Abelard, known for his writings on logic and his passion for Héloïse, was forced by the Catholic church to burn his own book. And in perhaps the most famous modern example of hostility to literature, Iran called for the murder of Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses”, in 1989. For its perceived blasphemy, the novel remains banned in at least a dozen countries from Senegal to Singapore. Book-banning remains a favourite tool of the autocrat and the fundamentalist, who are both genuinely threatened by the wayward ideas that literature can contain. In democracies books can provoke a different sort of panic. Armies, prisons, prim parents and progressive zealots all seek to censor literature they fear could overthrow their values. Bans on books that shock, mock or titillate reveal much about a time and place. They invariably attract legions of curious readers, too. Here are eight books you shouldn’t read.