The project
Banned Books started in April 2026 as a personal project by Ludo Raedts, a Dutch entrepreneur based in Groningen, the Netherlands. Frustrated by the lack of a single, structured, international reference for book censorship data, he built one from scratch — using open data sources, public records, and AI-assisted tooling.
The catalogue documents 949 books and 1,127 bans across 80 countries and territories, from the Vatican's Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1559) to school board removals in Florida in 2025. Every ban includes a source citation. Every book has a page. The site is free, non-commercial, and built in the open.
By the numbers
What makes it different
- 🌍Global scope — 80 countries including defunct states like the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany.
- 📖Per-book context — Each title has a "Why it was banned" section explaining who banned it, why, and what happened next.
- 🔍Browsable by country, reason, and author — Not just a flat list — filter by geography, ideology, or the people behind the books.
- 📗Free reading links — Where a book is in the public domain, we link to the free text on Project Gutenberg.
- 🔗Source citations on every ban — PEN America, ALA, Wikipedia, Index on Censorship, Freedom to Read Canada — every ban traces back to a source.
For press & researchers
We welcome media inquiries, data requests, and collaboration proposals. If you are writing about book censorship, literary freedom, or library policy, we are happy to provide context, data exports, or a comment.
The catalogue is a work in progress. Coverage is strongest for the United States, Western Europe, and prominent historical cases. Bans in closed authoritarian states are systematically underdocumented — we say so explicitly on the site.
Get in touch
For press inquiries, data requests, or corrections.