The brutally funny and scorchingly beautiful prose of Bothayna Al-Essa's The Book Censor's Library conveys the cost of authoritarianism and book-banning in the most personal terms. Readers of satire and dystopic fiction will find a welcome companion in Al-Essa's third novel to be translated into English.
The new censor starts his career offended by the banality of romance novels and the inflated claims of self-help books. His superiors quickly redirect his efforts at assessment toward more important offenses within their totalitarian theocracy known as "the System": those against "the forbidden trinity of God, government, and sex."
During his training, the censor "had learned that language should be an impenetrable surface. It should be smooth and flat with no bottom where meaning could settle. It was a censor's job to curb imagination." But imagination lies in wait for the censor, both within the books he's asked to evaluate and within his daughter, a sensitive child who echoes fairy tales and children's stories from the prerevolutionary "Old World." The censor soon finds himself drawn to and then consumed by banned books, including Zorba the Greek, Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio, Brave New World. He collects them into a library, and their contents even inhabit his dreams.
Aided by a group of resistance readers known as "Cancers," the censor embarks on a dangerous quest to rescue thousands more banned books from the impending flames of "Purification Day," but the mission may have dire consequences for the censor and the people he cares for.
In The Book Censor's Library, award-winning Kuwaiti writer Al-Essa (All that I Want to Forget) imparts themes that unfortunately remain timely. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.