Norway
Norway has historically restricted publications on grounds of obscenity, with Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lolita, and works by Henry Miller banned for varying periods in the 20th century. The first edition of *Lady Chatterley's Lover* was banned from 1928; Nabokov's *Lolita* was banned briefly in the 1950s before being lifted. Norway today consistently ranks among the top countries in global press freedom indices and has no formal book censorship regime. The country has maintained strong protections for literary freedom and has been a refuge for writers facing censorship elsewhere, including significant support for Salman Rushdie following the 1989 fatwa.
Bans by year
Banned books
Lady Chatterley's Lover
D.H. Lawrence
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.
Government / national · 1928 · lifted
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, whom he sexually molests after he becomes her stepfather. "Lolita" is his private nickname for Dolores. The novel was originally written in English and first published in Paris in 1955 by Olympia Press. Lat
Government / national · 1956 · lifted
The Story of O
Pauline Réage
Published in 1954 under the pseudonym Pauline Réage — later revealed to be Anne Desclos — this French novel depicts a woman's willing submission to increasingly extreme sexual domination. Seized by French police and prosecuted for obscenity, it nonetheless won the Prix des Deux Magots in 1955. Its exploration of female desire, submission, and identity became one of the founding texts of serious literary erotic fiction; its authorship by a woman complicated critical attempts to classify it as straightforward degradation.
Government / national · 1954 · lifted
Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller
A stream-of-consciousness story of a poverty-stricken young American, living in Paris.
Government / national · 1934 · lifted