The Book Censor's Library by Bothayna Al-Essa

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The Book Censor's Library

A Novel

by Bothayna Al-Essa

Narrator Cindy Kay

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Length 5 hours 25 minutes

Language English

Translators Ranya Abdelrahman & Sawad Hussain

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Bookseller recommendation

“Ah yes, another book that is complete fantastical, yet, all too real. In the veins of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, a totalitarian regime fueled by book censorship has taken over. No reading, no interpreting, no imagining. This was such a clever and riveting tale. Both a homage to books & reading, but also social commentary- with classic book references, metaphors, quotes, characters, sprinkled throughout. It highlighted the great importance of reading, books, reading banned books, all THE POWER books hold. Such a great one. (Same narrator as Water Moon! Love her.)”
— Ryann • The Buzzed Word

Summary

FINALIST, National Book Award for Translated Literature, 2024

A perilous and fantastical satire of banned books, secret archives, and the looming eye of an all-powerful government.

The new book censor hasn't slept soundly in weeks. By day he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish—allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams, and pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians trying to save their history and culture.

Reckoning with the global threat to free speech and the bleak future it all but guarantees, Bothayna Al-Essa marries the steely dystopia of Orwell's 1984 with the madcap absurdity of Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. The Book Censor's Library is a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.

Fiction Fiction - Literary