The Book Censor's Library
Bothayna Al-Essa-The Book Censor’s Library- the Sharjah Award for Creativity in the novel.
The Book Censor's Library by Bothayna Al-Essa [{2019 in Arabic; Eng. translation 2024]. Translated by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain.
The Book Censor’s Library, won the Sharjah Award for Creativity in the novel category in 2021
The Book Censor's Library is set in a dystopian future, a time: "after the fall of democracies, the rationing of technology, the revolution against the information revolution". It takes place in a totalitarian country where the authorities do everything in their considerable power to suppress the human imagination -- not least in their large-scale censorship and prohibition (and destruction) of books. It is a world where: "the mother of all banned books" is George Orwell's 1984 -- the book the regime considers more dangerous than any other because, as someone working in the Censorship Authority explains: "it tells our story". 1
Extensive Review and citation to other reviews are here: The Book Censor's Library by
Bothayna Al-Essa . Complete Review.
Oh this book looks interesting ... Kathleen do you know the part in Don Quixote where the priest and the barber go through the Don's books to throw them out or burn them because they want him to stop thinking he's a knight but then they keep finding books they themselves like, and they say "Wait wait I like this one, let's keep this one" ...? That's what I think of when I think of book banning ...
On my reading challenge for this year is a book written in the Middle East - putting this one on my list!