THE BOOK CENSOR’S LIBRARY BY BOTHAYNA AL-ESSA

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

The new book censor hasnt slept soundly in weeks. By day he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publishallusions 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 Orwells1984with the madcap absurdity of CarrollsAlice in Wonderland, resulting in a dreadful twist worthy of Kafka.The Book Censors Libraryis a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.

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