Maus ban: It's complicated

Going by the rulebook is easier said than done because such discussions are fraught with emotion and opinion

On January 10, the McMinn County Board of Education in Tennessee, United States, voted to remove Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus from the eighth-grade English Language Arts curriculum. They did so on the grounds of profanity and depictions of nudity. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book, which captures the life of a Holocaust survivor, is based on what Mr Spiegelman’s father — a Polish Jew — personally went through under the Nazi regime.

The Board’s decision has been widely criticised within the US and outside. While some have called it an anti-Semitic move, others have lambasted the Board for stifling artistic freedom. The