The 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded Thursday to Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
One of the most prestigious awards in literature, the award recognizes an author’s body of work and contributions to humankind. But for countless U.S. schoolchildren, works by more than a dozen Nobel-winning authors have been banned, their books removed from their school shelves as part of the widespread and expanding book bans becoming the new normal in this country. PEN America has tallied 22,810 instances of books banned in public schools since 2021, most surely an undercount, of this unprecedented wave of censorship.
Here’s a sample of the renowned literature by Nobel-winning authors that were counted in PEN America’s Indexes of School Book Bans from 2021 to 2025:
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro; banned in two districts in Florida in 2022 and 2023.
The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing; banned in a Florida school district in 2024.
Disgrace by JM Coetzee; banned in a Florida school district in 2024.
Blindness by José Saramago; banned in school districts in Florida and Texas in 2024.
Herzog by Saul Bellow; banned in a Florida school district in 2024.
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse; banned in a Florida school district in 2023.
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak; banned in a Florida school district in 2023
The Stranger: The Graphic Novel by Albert Camus, illustrated by Jacques Ferrandez and translated by Sandra Smith; banned in a district in Missouri in 2022 and a district in Florida in 2023
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez; banned in two Florida school districts in 2023 and 2025.
Beethoven Was One-sixteenth Black: and Other Stories by Nadine Gordimer; banned in a Texas school district in 2024.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding; banned in at least three school districts since 2021.
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner; banned in at least 10 districts since 2023.
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway; banned in at least three districts since 2023.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck; banned in two Florida districts in 2023.
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison; banned in at least 105 districts since 2021.
Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis; banned in a Florida school district in 2023.
The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling, banned in a Texas school district in 2025.