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In honour of Banned Books Week, the team at Index on Censorship highlight their favourite books that have historically been banned

Government auditors have previously asked libraries to step up efforts to root out works ‘manifestly contrary’ to national security.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux,586 pp. This article was first published in the June 26, 2008 issue of Sixty pages or so into Ma Jian’s novel Beijing Coma, the hero, Dai Wei, is troubled by the memory of a harrowing anatomy lecture that he attended as a university student. Taught by “a celebrated cardiovascular specialist,” the class observed the dissection of the fresh corpse of a criminal whom the government had just executed (in celebration of National Day) and whose organs had been speedily harvested for transplant. Dai Wei’s moral revulsion was tinged with personal anxiety, for this...