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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Ella Creamer

Iowa law banning books including 1984 and Ulysses blocked by US federal judge

Books that are frequently listed on banned book lists.
Free speech … other books that are frequently listed on banned book lists. Photograph: Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

A lawsuit brought by publishers and authors including John Green and Jodi Picoult has led to a portion of a law banning Iowa school libraries and classrooms from carrying books depicting sex acts being halted.

On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the measure, writing that it had been applied unconstitutionally in many schools and that books of “undeniable political, artistic, literary, and/or scientific value” had been caught up in it, including Ulysses by James Joyce, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

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