N. Carolina County Bans ‘Invisible Man’

All copies of Ralph Ellison's National Book Award–winning novel Invisible Man will be removed from a North Carolina county's school libraries. The Randolph County Board of Education voted to ban the critically acclaimed 1952 book from its reading list. Invisible Man was named one of the top 100 English-language novels of the 20th century by Time magazine in 2010, but according to the parent whose complaint sparked the vote, "This book is filthier, too much for teenagers." The board's chair said he thought the novel was "a hard read," while another board member said he "didn't find any literary value" in it.