One of the best books I read last year was Bothayna Al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library. Al-Essa is a novelist from Kuwait, and the book was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction for translated literature.
While the introduction states the story is set in the future in an unnamed place, its focus, book censorship, resonates as it thrives in our country and around the world. In The Book Censor’s Library, the authoritarian government views books as a threat. That said, the book censor, who took the position because he desperately needed a job, discovers to his horror that he loves books so much, not only does he struggle to ban them, but they have taken over his life. In his bedroom they are stacked “one atop the other, towering over him, hemming him in from every side,” which causes a rift with his wife (p. 9). This creates an ongoing conflict for him, comically portrayed, as he strives to keep his job with the Censorship Authority and maintain his relationships with his wife and young daughter.
Despite its rigid demeanor, we immediately see that the Censorship Authority is not an ordinary place of employment. Rabbits hop through the hallways and rooms, disrupting the censors’ work. In determining if a book should be censored, the book censor “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” (p. 21). Yet the rabbits’ ongoing presence brings to mind, for him and us, Alice in Wonderland.
Complicating his life even more is the book censor’s young daughter who he loves dearly. Mysteriously, she knows many stories she has never been told or read, such as “the boy who could fly, the wicked witch and the magic shoes, and the poisoned apple too” (p. 82). She brims with imagination, which puts her and the book censor in danger. In this society, children with imagination are considered aberrant and sent to rehabilitation centers.
Al-Essa uses satire, humor, and clever plotting as we follow the book censor’s struggle to deal with pesky rabbits, censor books, keep his wife, and protect his daughter whose vivid imagination knows no bounds. As the story progresses, the book censor discovers he is not alone. He encounters individuals who also love books, covertly collecting and protecting selected books from being warehoused and ultimately destroyed.
For those of you who haven’t read the book, I won’t say more about the plot and how it ends. It is somewhat open-ended. But I will say the journey toward that end is thought-provoking and wonderfully imagined. I highly recommend The Book Censor’s Library as a great read.
Karen T Miller 