The Book Censor's Library

A Novel

By: Bothayna Al-Essa, Ranya Abdelrahman - translator, Sawad Hussain - translator

Narrated by: Cindy Kay

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.

©2023 Bothayna Al-Essa; translation copyright 2024 by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (P)2024 Tantor

beautiful homage to the imagination

such a prescient beautiful homage to the irrepressibility of the human imagination, great thinkers and the books they bring to life. i loved it all. i could not stop listening AND the reader was phenomenal.

Thought-provoking and original

Fans of dystopia like 1984 will love it. It’s original and doesn’t mince words. Excellent translation

The ending!

While the translation can make it a bit clunky at times, it also makes the story a little extra special. I believe this book will be banned very quickly.

I was underwhelmed

This book should have made me incredibly happy. It was continually referencing books I have loved and books that left me feeling awestruck. It however, did not have that effect on me. It felt forced. It felt repetitive. I wanted to see how it ended and yet at the same time I genuinely didn't care if I finished it. I understand the importance of this book as I see censorship rearing it's ugly head again in our society. I am hoping that the book will grow on me as I reflect on it. At the moment, I am most aware of how tedious it was.