Banned Books Week: Fiction

Dreiser's novel tracks an ordinary young man capable of committing murder and the social and political forces that come into play after his arrest. In Clyde Griffiths, the impoverished, restless offspring of street preachers, we see a portrait of a man whose circumstances and dreams of self-betterment conspire to pull him toward unforgivable violence.

George Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is the account of the bold struggle, initiated by the animals, that transforms Mr. Jones's Manor Farm into Animal Farm, a wholly democratic society built on the credo that all animals are created equal. Out of their cleverness, the pigs Napoleon, Squealer, and Snowball emerge as leaders of the new community in a subtle evolution that proves disastrous.

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

This coming-of-age classic and the bestselling Chicano novel of all time follows a young boy as he questions his faith and beliefs. Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will probe the family ties that bind and rend him, and he will discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past--a mythic legacy as palpable as the Catholicism of Latin America.

Toni Morrison's first novel tells the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of dystopian literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order--all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls.

The "brilliant, funny, meaningful novel" (The New Yorker) that established J. D. Salinger as a leading voice in American literature. The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caufield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days.

Set in the deep American South between the wars, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel tells the story of Celie, a young black girl born into poverty and segregation. Gradually, Celie discovers the power and joy of her own spirit, freeing her from her past and reuniting her with those she loves.

A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners suddenly realizes their merit.

The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse.

A Modern Library edition of the renowned black author's classic first novel captures a vivid and provocative portrait of the African-American experience.

Grapes of Wrath traces the migration of an Oklahoma Dust Bowl family to California and their subsequent hardships as migrant farm workers.

The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic.

Here, in an astonishing debut by a gifted storyteller, is the magnificent saga of proud and passionate men and women (the Truebas) and the turbulent times through which they suffer and triumph.

Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. Ralph Ellison's nightmare journey across the racial divide tells unparalleled truths about the nature of bigotry and its effects on the minds of both victims and perpetrators.

Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy through the horrific rule of the Taliban, The Kite Runner is the heartbreaking story of the unlikely and inseparable friendship between a wealthy Afghan boy and the son of his father's servant. Published in the aftermath of America's invasion of Afghanistan, the characters are caught in the tragic sweep of history.

Humbert Humbert attempts to justify his love for and obsession with the barely adolescent Dolores Haze, known as Lolita. Humbert's cross-country flight with his adored nymphet ends with her betrayal of him with his rival, the evil Quilty, who pursues Lolita not out of love but out of lust and selfishness, and who functions as a kind of double for the more pure-hearted (if perverse) Humbert.

A plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilization the boys can do anything they want. They attempt to forge their own society, failing, however, in the face of terror, sin and evil.

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling.

Naked Lunch is structured as a series of loosely connected episodes and, according to the author, intended to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the U.S. to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone.

Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows a platoon of Marines who are stationed on the Japanese-held island of Anopopei.

Native Son tells the story of a young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930's, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection of the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.

In this dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative, Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thought crimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can't escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching.

An unlikely pair, George and Lennie, two migrant workers in California during the Great Depression, grasp for their American Dream. George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But George cannot protect Lennie from unpredictable events.

Turning conventional notions of sanity and insanity on their heads, the novel tells the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the story through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them all imprisoned.

One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie's best-known and most galvanizing book. Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil.

Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

From the World War II firebombing of Dresden to the distant planet called Tralfamadore, the reader follows Billy Pilgrim in his attempt to understand the natures of time and existence.

Set on a small island in the Puget Sound, that is at various moments a courtroom drama, an interracial love story, and a war chronicle.

First published in 1979, this novel opens with Stingo, a young southerner, journeying north in 1947 to become a writer. It leads us into his intellectual and emotional entanglement with his neighbors in a Brooklyn rooming house: Nathan, a tortured, brilliant Jew, and his lover, Sophie, a beautiful Polish woman whose wrist bears the grim tattoo of a concentration camp...and whose past is strewn with death that she alone survived.

Originally published in 1937, Their Eyes Were Watching God has become one of the most important and enduring works of modern American literature. A tale of awakening and independence featuring a strong female protagonist driven to fulfill her passions and ambitions, Their Eyes Were Watching God is a classic of the Harlem Renaissance and perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of literature.