“Banned books
Are the only books that truly live.”
Nâzim Hikmet’s passionate plea for the banned book (see our Poem of the Month) will leave no-one unmoved. It was spread around on Facebook during Banned Books Week, an event that got attention all over the internet as well as in our Leiden public library which showed a thoughtfully curated selection of banned books.
Interestingly, the only book they could show that was actually banned by the Dutch Government was Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. All other books on the displays were banned in foreign countries or by religious groups. It might make us feel that the topic of Banned Books is hardly up close and personal. Yet increasingly books are banned or censured. Not just in far-away dictatorial regimes. Not just in the U.S.A., which eerily and increasingly resemble The Republic of Gilead as described in The Handmaid’s Tale (a novel that, while freely sold in bookshops, is under severe public library and school library restrictions in 11 states).
Books are censured in the United Kingdom as well. And even in our country there are teachers in a Reformatorische School who need to check whether it is allowed to read a play by Shakespeare with their students.
Banned books are not a thing from the past, from foreign countries where they do things differently. They are a harsh, urgent reality in the here and now.
Let’s all get together to hear about banned books and celebrate banned books at our
Mayflower Banned Books Festival
November 8, 2026, Breestraat 70
Programme (in Dutch):
13.30: Leo van Zanen: NIET LEZEN! Een overzicht van censuur, publicatieverbod, vervolging (en erger) van boeken en schrijvers in de loop van de geschiedenis.
14.30: Looi van Kessel: Moloch! Solitude! Filth!: Alan Ginsbergs Howl en de seksuele bevrijding van literatuur.
15.30: Pauze
15.45: ‘Willen we meer of minder censuur?’ Louis Smit en Coco Hoek Paneldiscussie
16.45: Mayflower Theatre Company: een fragment uit Lysistrata Sylvia Hageman, Esther Straathof en Sigrid de Zwart
17.00: Afsluiting