Banned Bookshelf

Banned books made into movies

Many of the most famous banned books became films, and a few of the films ran into censors of their own. Here are the banned books in our catalogue with notable screen adaptations, oldest book first. Each title links to the book's page, with the full ban history and where to buy it.

The list

  • Candide (Voltaire, 1759). Seized in Geneva and Paris on publication. Leonard Bernstein turned it into a stage musical (1956) rather than a film.
  • Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert, 1857). Flaubert was tried for offending public morals. Films include Vincente Minnelli's 1949 version and a 2014 adaptation.
  • Ulysses (James Joyce, 1922). Seized by US Customs until 1933. Joseph Strick's 1967 film was itself banned in Ireland for decades.
  • Lady Chatterley's Lover (D. H. Lawrence, 1928). Cleared in the 1960 Penguin trial. Adapted many times, most recently by Netflix in 2022.
  • All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque, 1929). Burned by the Nazis in 1933. Lewis Milestone's 1930 film won the Academy Award for Best Picture; Germany's 2022 version won four Oscars, including Best International Feature.
  • Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, 1932). Banned in Ireland in 1932. Adapted for television several times, most recently as a 2020 series.
  • Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller, 1934). Kept out of the US until 1961. Joseph Strick filmed it in 1970.
  • The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck, 1939). Banned in Kern County, California, in 1939. John Ford's film followed in 1940.
  • Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945). Banned in the Soviet bloc. The 1954 British animated film was, it later emerged, financed in part by the CIA.
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949). Banned in the Soviet Union. Filmed in 1956 and again in 1984, with John Hurt.
  • Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, 1953). Censored by its own publisher in a school edition. François Truffaut filmed it in 1966; HBO made a new version in 2018.
  • Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov, 1955). Banned in France from 1956 to 1958. Stanley Kubrick's film came out in 1962, Adrian Lyne's in 1997.
  • Howl (Allen Ginsberg, 1956). Seized by customs, then cleared at trial. The 2010 film Howl dramatises the obscenity trial.
  • Doctor Zhivago (Boris Pasternak, 1957). Banned in the Soviet Union until 1988. David Lean's 1965 film is one of the highest-grossing films of its decade.
  • Naked Lunch (William S. Burroughs, 1959). Ruled obscene in Boston in 1965, cleared in 1966. David Cronenberg's 1991 film mixes the book with Burroughs's life.
  • Less Than Zero (Bret Easton Ellis, 1985). Not banned by a government, but long controversial; filmed in 1987.

Watch, then read

Most adaptations soften what got the book banned in the first place, so the book is often a different experience. All of the books above are in print; their pages have a buy button and a library link. More on how and why these books were banned: banned by governments, courts, customs and churches.