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Political Power And Banned Books

2026-01-30 · 16:00 UTC ·The Browser ·3 min read

Brief

The Browser's newsletter curates two literary-political reads linked by themes of power and repression. The first, Henrik Karlsson's reflection on Robert Caro's Lyndon B. Johnson biography, reframes political power as an extractive craft: not a formal attribute of titles or institutions, but something accumulated incrementally by operators who exploit every available opening. The second, Amir Ahmadi Arian's essay on Sadegh Hedayat's 1936 novella The Blind Owl, uses the book's rare status as banned both before and after Iran's 1979 revolution to illustrate how literature can expose contradictions that survive regime change. Because the newsletter is a recommendation round-up rather than a substantive original article, the technical or analytical depth lies mostly in the linked essays themselves, with the Browser providing concise framing and notable details such as dates, word counts, and the central metaphors driving each piece.

Cleaned source text

title: Political Power And Banned Books

author: The Browser

content_type: newsletter

publication: thebrowser.com

published: 2026-01-30T16:00:41+00:00

source_url: gmail://19c0fa6782e74bae

word_count: 707

Political power as something you frack, and the novella banned both before and after Iran's 1979 revolution

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Political Power And Banned Books

By Caroline Crampton • 30 Jan 2026 | View in browser

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On Political Power

Henrik Karlsson | Escaping Flatland | 28th January 2026 | UThoughts after reading the first volume of Robert Caro's Lyndon B. Johnson biography. Political power is not, as the writer had thought, endowed by jobs or institutions. Real political operatives understand that it "is something you frack, something you force out of the stone by pumping fluid into the cracks". Every drop adds up. Johnson saw the world this way, and had done since he was a toddler (2,700 words)

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Iran's Ultimate Banned Book

Amir Ahmadi Arian | Dial | 15th January 2026 | U

No text captures Iran's contradictions as well as the 1936 novella _The Blind Owl_. Sadegh Hedayat's book holds the distinction of having been banned both before and after the 1979 revolution. Its ambiguous, symbol-laden narrative follows a mediocre painter through his obsession with a beautiful woman, whom he kills, and then his awakening as "the old, Quran-reciting man he most despises" (3,700 words)

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