Salman Rushdie once said, “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” Of course, Rushdie would know all about that; he wrote a book that caused offence, and was subsequently banned. Not only that, it disrupted his life to an extraordinary extent because he was afraid he would be killed for having had the temerity to write what he did.

We are looking at more controversial books this week, although none of them came close to enduring what Rushdie did. They did face struggles and censure though, and undeservedly so, in my opinion. There are some ways of avoiding controversy, such as pen names, although this doesn’t seem to work in the long run.

Read more here.