Scan barcode
A review by justabean_reads
The Book Censor's Library by Bothayna Al-Essa
3.0
This was on the USian National Book Award's shortlist, and people were aflutter that a spec-fic book had made it there (they were also excited about Orbital, which is neither SF nor speculative fiction, so you never can tell). I'm trying to read more in translation, and hadn't done anything from Arabic this year, so picked it up from the library. It was... fine?
It's set in a post-revolutionary world in conversation with 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, from the point of view of a newly-minted book censor, who's charged with banning any book that doesn't fit through the narrowest of government restrictions. He lives in a beige and restricted world, and the exposure to actual literature is deeply shocking, and then enthralling, and then causes reality to bend, or maybe that's just his mind breaking. The more he reads, the less clear it is if what's happening on page is actually happening, which is of course the point.
The author is a Kuwaiti bookseller, who has to deal with this kind of censorship on the daily, and meant this book as a way to look at the opposition. Given that, I would've liked the censor (who is never named) to take a little longer to fall head over heels in love with reading. It felt like it was too easy, and too immediate a change in him, where I would've liked to see more struggle. However, he's also several generations into regime brainwashing, so it would make some kind of sense how unprepared he is to encounter colour. I did like how each time he reads a new book (Zorba the Greek, Alice in Wonderland, 1984 itself) he starts seeing the world through new language, and new terms. It does a great job of underlining how censorship is meant to restrict thoughts more than anything. (Good interview with the author and translators.)
There's a secondary plot about the censor's imaginative young daughter, and the struggle to suppress her expressiveness in order to save her (and himself) from re-education, while increasingly realising the cost. The struggle to not destroy her in the act of protecting her is one of the strongest lines in the book.
I'm not sure why it didn't hit me harder than it did, but for some reason, the whole thing felt more analytical than real in a way that didn't completely land for me.
It's set in a post-revolutionary world in conversation with 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, from the point of view of a newly-minted book censor, who's charged with banning any book that doesn't fit through the narrowest of government restrictions. He lives in a beige and restricted world, and the exposure to actual literature is deeply shocking, and then enthralling, and then causes reality to bend, or maybe that's just his mind breaking. The more he reads, the less clear it is if what's happening on page is actually happening, which is of course the point.
The author is a Kuwaiti bookseller, who has to deal with this kind of censorship on the daily, and meant this book as a way to look at the opposition. Given that, I would've liked the censor (who is never named) to take a little longer to fall head over heels in love with reading. It felt like it was too easy, and too immediate a change in him, where I would've liked to see more struggle. However, he's also several generations into regime brainwashing, so it would make some kind of sense how unprepared he is to encounter colour. I did like how each time he reads a new book (Zorba the Greek, Alice in Wonderland, 1984 itself) he starts seeing the world through new language, and new terms. It does a great job of underlining how censorship is meant to restrict thoughts more than anything. (Good interview with the author and translators.)
There's a secondary plot about the censor's imaginative young daughter, and the struggle to suppress her expressiveness in order to save her (and himself) from re-education, while increasingly realising the cost. The struggle to not destroy her in the act of protecting her is one of the strongest lines in the book.
I'm not sure why it didn't hit me harder than it did, but for some reason, the whole thing felt more analytical than real in a way that didn't completely land for me.