What’s a book that we were never supposed to be able to read?

One of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century was Alexander Grothendieck. His work created a unified view of topology, algebra, geometry, analysis, and number theory in a revolutionary way. While many use his work it really lives on through algebraic and arithmetic geometers. This is the area I studied and I love how we use geometry to tell us about numbers. How solutions to modular curves tell us about how numbers fit into equations.

Some other facts about Grothendieck:

• Survived Nazi camps as a child.
• Escaped a couple times to "kill hitler."
• Lived underground in France, sometimes surviving in the forests foraging for food and water, other times sheltered by others.
• Studied math after the war. Was first invited to the US by Harvard, but could not because he would not sign a document promising not to "overthrow the US government."
• Eventually was allowed into the US, but to protest Vietnam he moved his category theory classes to the jungles outside Hanoi during bombings.

But in the late 80s and early 90s Grothendieck seems to have a bit of a mental break. He moved to an unknown location and dropped contact with all mathematicians. He began talking about how his work was like "chaff in the wind" and not worth the paper it was written on. That if anything he had written was worthwhile, it would be rediscovered. He published "Déclaration d'intention de non-publication" declaring that his work had been published without his permission and requesting that all his work be destroyed. We didn't do the last part.

Since his death translation of his work has started in earnest. Two of his most foundational works are EGA (Éléments de géométrie algébrique) and SGA (Séminaire de Géométrie Algébrique du Bois Marie) were still in French when I was in grad school and essentially learned to read French just to read his work. My advisor would regularly just send me random things that were supposed to be in SGA or EGA and ask me to find the page/theorem number for references. That usually meant several hours of me trying to read through scans of old manuscripts looking for something the right "shape" before trying to translate the French into usable modern math.

He died in 2014, I was actually in an algebraic geometry class the day the news hit. He was living in a small village at the base of the Pyrenees alone.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius likely was not meant to be released, considering it is his private writings to himself. I found that aspect made it interesting to read, because it seems very personal to read someone's journal.

The reference to the Platonov novella makes me wonder how many books published in the USSR (and maybe authoritarian countries more generally) are only known from their censored versions. Reading an afterward of Roadside Picnic was interesting because it gave an overview of working with/against/around censors. And I think the translations made after 1991 are likely based on the authors' version and not the censored one.

One of my favorite novella Soul or Dzhan by Andrey Platonov. Platonov was a early Soviet realist writer that was mostly active towards the beginning of the USSR. But with Soul, Platonov had issues getting it even published and when it did finally got published, it was heavily censored by the Writer's Union, in that only a few of the chapters got published, with the future editions got more and more censored. It was only until in 1999 that they found and published a uncensored, full version of the novella. And it wasn't until 2003 that it got translated into English, along with some of his other works. And the version that I had read, had told you where the censored version had ended, which was a cool detail that the publishers included.

I know it's somewhat common knowledge, but Emily Dickinson wanted all her poetry burnt but her sister Lavinia decided against it.

I'll give something in terms of being "leaked". Not really a book, but J.D. Salinger's "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls," "Paula," and "Birthday Boy" is worth mentioning. Never intended to be released, one of these pieces, "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls", was held securely at the Princeton University Library and was held under supervision if someone wanted to read it. Somehow, all three stories were leaked despite their security on a torrent tracker. It's been confirmed to those who had read the stories under strict conditions that the leaked version is real, so it's unsure how one person leaked it on the web. Here's a review on the leaked stories from the Guardian.

Either way, this is an excellent topic to post cause it raises great questions on publication. These stories were obviously against the wishes of the author. If a writer goes to great lengths to prevent publication, should we have to respect their intent, or do literary and historical value outweigh the author's personal preference? What if an author didn't have explicit intentions for a novel that wasn't published? Should we still publish that, or keep it archived as we don't know the intent? A lot of interesting and ethical questions on archiving older works.

One could spend their career studying the samizdat of the Soviet Union. Literally translated as self-publishing, it was a form of dissident activity given the state of censorship during the Soviet Union (which would ebb and flow throughout the century). This would often take the form of underground magazines but also manuscripts smuggled abroad. Several notable examples include The Master and Margarita, The Gulag Archipelago, and Doctor Zhivago.

The Master and Margarita is a surreal satire that's a scathing critique of the Soviet Union, written by Mikhail Bulgakov throughout the 1930s. Bulgakov was often censored, and even by Stalin himself. So he wrote Stalin requesting he be allowed to leave and was denied. After he passed in 1940, his wife retained what writings she could that he hadn't already burned himself. A censored version was published in a Moscow magazine from 1966-1967, which was smuggled out and published out of Paris. The uncensored manuscript circulated as samizdat and was eventually smuggled out and published from Frankfurt in 1969.

Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago put the spotlight on the gulag system that he and many others suffered under. It is several novels first written between '58 and '68, but published out of Paris in 1973 after it was smuggled out.

Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago is a critique of the October Revolution it takes place during. He initially wrote passages during the 1910s and 1920s during the revolution, though didn't finish writing it until 1955. It was rejected for publication, but later smuggled out and published out of Italy in 1957.

All of these authors would be delighted that their work lives on. They're worth the read if you enjoy Soviet literature, although One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich from Solzhenitsyn is a historical fiction that's a tighter read and still speaks to the emotional truth of the gulag prisoners. Even if you don't know how you feel about Soviet lit, The Master and Margarita is a wild ride.

Most of Kafka's seminal works. At the time of his death he destroyed most of his work, and ordered his friend Max Brod to destroy what he couldn't.

Brod explicitly went against Kafka's demands, and on the topic said that Kafka should have know he would never do it. Kafka hated his writing and believed he was awful, while Brod (and Kafka's other friends) always believed he was excellent.

After he died, Brod collected several unfinished manuscripts, the most important of which were later put together (with some guesswork taking a few editions, since Kafka's chapters were written non-linearly, incomplete, and unordered): The Trial and The Castle.

In regards to answering your questions, Jacob Geller has a great essay addressing most (all?) of them: Art For No One.