Bothayna Al-Essa – författare

FINALIST, National Book Award for Translated Literature, 2024A 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.

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.

En un régimen posrevolucionario en el que se prohíbe la imaginación, un censor de libros se convierte en el inesperado Guardián de la Biblioteca preservada por una célula de Cánceres, la resistencia que opera dentro del propio gobierno. Apropiándose del lenguaje de grandes clásicos como 1984, Alicia en el País de las Maravillas y Fahrenheit 451, la novela cuenta la historia del censor convertido en lector, y cuestiona y problematiza las políticas disfrazadas de progresismo implementadas por los Estados totalitarios.Escrita en una prosa magnética, La biblioteca del censor de libros, finalista en 2024 del prestigioso National Book Award de Estados Unidos en la categoría de literatura traducida, es una novela inquietante y poderosa sobre el derecho a leer, a recordar y a imaginar un futuro distinto. Galardonada con el Premio Sharjah a la Creatividad Árabe, se presenta en esta edición por primera vez en español en traducción de Franco Monterroso.