Salman Rushdie has faced death threats for "The Satanic Verses," banned in several countries for its blasphemous portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. On August 12, 2022, 24-year-old suspect Hadi Matar stabbed Rushdie multiple times just before he gave a public lecture in New York. Matar, who said Rushdie "was someone who attacked Islam," has pleaded not guilty for assault and attempted murder.

"All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque is an unvarnished look at life on the German front during World War I, as told by 20-year-old protagonist, Paul Baumer. Seen by many critics as a key anti-war book, it was banned and burned under the Nazi regime in Germany. The first German-language film adaptation of the book is now a best international film contender for the 2023 Oscars.

This 1953 dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury tells of an American society of the future where books are outlawed — and burnt if discovered. In the 1990s one US school district refused for the use of the word "goddamn." It has also been challenged on the basis of "questionable themes" like censorship, repression and religion. It is often regarded as one of Bradbury's best works.

George Orwell's "Animal Farm" features a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where they can be equal, free, and happy. It was a swipe at corruption in the former Soviet Union, and was banned there until the 1980s. Schools in the United Arab Emirates also banned it in 2002 for depicting a talking pig, an animal considered unclean in Islam.

Despite its global acclaim and success that saw both children and adults devouring the entire "Harry Potter" series written by British author J.K.Rowling, the books have been targeted for removal from American school libraries as they dealt with ghosts, cults and witchcraft.

"And Tango makes Three" is based on the true story of two male penguins in a New York zoo who raise a chick together. Pro-family organisations and individuals in the US criticized it and called for its censorship for being "anti-ethnic" and "anti-family" to "unsuited to age group." In Singapore, where homosexuality is illegal, it was first pulled from libraries but later moved to 'adult' sections.

In Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel "Lolita" is about a middle-aged college professor who is obsessed with a twelve-year-old daughter whom he sexually exploits. In today's plain language, he's a pedophile. Unsurprisingly, it was banned as obscene over different periods in France, England, Argentina and New Zealand. Shockingly, it wasn't banned in the United States, though it was challenged.

His debut, the 1987 short-story collection "Stick Out Your Tongue," highlighted the brutal Chinese occupation of Tibet. The government condemned the book as “spiritual pollution” and permanently banned Ma's books from the country. Ma himself was banned from China after the publication of his 2013 novel, "The Dark Road," about the impact of the nation’s one-child policy.

Said to be the most-challenged book in the US from 2010 to 2019, Publishers Weekly described this YA novel as the “Native American equivalent of 'Angela’s Ashes,' a coming-of-age story so well observed that its very rootedness in one specific culture is also what lends it universality, and so emotionally honest that the humor almost always proves painful.”

Lawyer Shirin Ebadi was one of Iran's first female judges. After the 1979 revolution, she was dismissed from her position. Ebadi opened a legal practice and began defending people who were being persecuted by the authorities. Despite being the first female peace prize laureate from the Islamic world, her memoir "Iran Awakening" is banned in her native country for its political content.

Despite being acknowledged as one of the best American novels ever written, Mark Twain's 1884 novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is frequently challenged in the US over its depiction of racial stereotypes. The N-word is used 242 times in the novel, leading one administrator to brand it the “most grotesque example of racism I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Famed Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei's “Dialogue on the Two World Systems” published in 1632 was originally banned by the Catholic Church for suggesting that the earth orbited the sun, and he was accused of heresy back then. It wasn't until 1822 that this ban was lifted and finally in 1992, Pope John Paul II and the the Pontifical Academy of Sciences officially declared that Galileo was right.