Between 1967 and 1976, Italian writer Goliarda Sapienza (1924-76) wrote The Art of Joy, a subversive novel about the dazzling social ascent of a rebellious heroine; too scandalous to be published at that contradictory time.
In 1991, American Psycho, the third novel by controversial writer Bret Easton Ellis, provoked heated discussions among critics and readers alike; an extraordinarily disturbing book that transported its readers into the mind of Patrick Bateman, a cynical mergers and acquisitions executive obsessed with brands, inconsequential details, pop culture and brutal murder.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, the seminal work of Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), continues to find new readers and inspire artists and creators around the world more than a century after its publication in 1891, because it was endowed with all the elements necessary to make it an undisputed heritage of world literature.
An upbeat and humorous account of the hard life under police protection led by Italian writer Roberto Saviano since the publication in 2006 of Gomorrah, his controversial book about the Camorra, the ruthless organization that has dominated the criminal underground in Naples for centuries.
In 1818, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a powerful and timelessness novel which eternal theme is nothing other than man's quest for the secret of life. Since then, the Creature became a pop culture icon, overshadowing the novel and Doctor Frankenstein himself.
On January 31, 1857, the French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) took his place in the dock for contempt of public morality and religion. The accused, the real one, is, through him, Emma Bovary, heroine with a thousand faces and a thousand desires, guilty without doubt of an unforgivable desire to live.
England, 1960. The Crown sues the publisher Penguin Books in order to ban the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover, a novel by the British writer D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), published privately in Italy in 1928, which celebrates nature and deals with sex without taboos.
An analysis of The Kindly Ones, Jonathan Littell's controversial novel, published in 2006, which dissects the ruthless mechanisms of the Shoah from the detached point of view of Maximilian Aue, a high-ranking Nazi officer.