A school board in Tennessee has banned Maus, Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic memoir about his parents’ experiences as Holocaust survivors, NBC News reports.

The board of education in McMinn County voted unanimously to remove the book from the school district’s curriculum, citing profanity and depictions of nudity. The illustrations of naked figures depict mice.

Maus, published in two volumes in 1986 and 1991, is widely considered a classic of Holocaust literature and remains one of the most acclaimed works of graphic literature.

Jonathan Pierce, a member of the school board, said, “The wording in this book is in direct conflict of some of our policies.…I’m just an old country school board member and I think in our policy it says the decision stops with this board.”

Spiegelman told CNBC that he thought the board’s decision was “Orwellian.”

“I also understand that Tennessee is obviously demented,” he said. “There’s something going on very, very haywire there.”

The school board’s ban drew widespread condemnation on social media.

“There’s only one kind of people who would vote to ban Maus, whatever they are calling themselves these days,” writer Neil Gaiman tweeted.

And author Andrea Pitzer wrote, “Banning Maus is horrifying in and of itself, for the erasure of apocalyptic, genocidal real-world suffering and the dismissal of complex art. I’m also thinking about kids in Tennessee who may grow up denied even the opportunity to escape the ignorance their parents are embracing.”

Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.