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The Book Censor's Library
Bothayna Al-Essa
Ranya Abdelrahman
Sawad Hussain
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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, resulting in a dreadful twist worthy of Kafka. The Book Censor’s Library is a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.
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Posts about this title from Mood Reads
Mood Reads\ \ Hannah\ \ • Jan 16 2025
Everything I've been reading, watching, and listening to so far!
19 books
2
Posts about this book from across Bindery
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speculative books in translation
💭 do you have a recent favorite translated read?
i love checking out speculative fiction from around the world!
📚 books mentioned: - The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated by Sawad Hussain and Ranya Abdelrahman - Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, translated by Jonathan Wright - The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-ran, translated by Gene Png
👗💄: - dress is from Selkie - eyeshadow is The Spring Symphony Palette from Dandy Lion Cosmetics - eyeshadow shimmer are a few single shadows from Half Magic - lip combo is Fenty Treatz Lip Oil (Cacao) and Gloss Bomb (Rose Amber) from Fenty Beauty - (also if you have a question about my makeup or something i’m wearing, most of it is curated in my shopmy!)
thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing for the gifted copy!
#translatedbooks #booksintranslation #speculativefiction #nycinfluencer #bookstagram @restlessbooks @penguinbooks @bloomsburypublishing @selkie @dandylionsco @halfmagicbeauty @fentybeauty
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books in translation • books translated to English • books from around the world • diversify your reading • diversify your shelves • speculative fiction books • spec fic book recs • horror books • science fiction books • literary fiction books • diverse books • Penguin Books • Restless Books
3 books
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Jul 12 2025
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some books i’ve read and loved that were translated into english!!
some books i’ve read and loved that were translated into english!!
📚 books mentioned: - Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (translated by Elisabeth Jaquette) - Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori) - Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell and Ruth Sepp) - The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa (translated by Sawad Hussain and Ranya Abdelrahman)
thank you to Grove Press and Restless Books for the gifted copies!!
#booksintranslation #translatedbooks #scifibooks #horrorbooks #weirdbooks #starrysteph #nycinfluencer #bookstagram #nycbookstagram @fitzcarraldoeditions @ndpublishing @groveatlantic @riverheadbooks @restlessbooks
4 books
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Feb 1 2025
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📖✨would you read these books based on their opening lines? continuing the series of recommending books using their first lines!
📚 books mentioned: - But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo - The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong - The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa - Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar - Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker - Conditions of a Heart by Bethany Mangle - I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
#bookrecsfromfirstlines #fantasybooks #horrorbooks #scifibooks #bookrecommendations #starrysteph #nycinfluencer #bookstagram
7 books
Mood Reads\ \ Hannah\ \ • Jan 16 2025
Everything I've been reading, watching, and listening to so far!
19 books
2
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Dec 14 2024
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don’t panic!! here are some super quick reads to get back on track :)
📚 books mentioned: - The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djélí Clark - The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa - The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar
#shortbooks #novellarecommmendations #quickreads #readinggoal #fantasybooks #scifibooks #starrysteph #nycinfluencer #nycbooktok #booktok #diversebooktok #IGShareYourPassion @tordotcompub @restlessbooks
3 books
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Nov 23 2024
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happy National Book Awards day! will you be tuning in tonight?
these books were gifted to me by The National Book Foundation and Meta/Threads. they let me pick out any three finalists, and it was a hard choice, but I obviously loved all of my selections!
3 books
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Nov 23 2024
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another successful weekend readathon! i joined in between work and a couple of other things and still managed to read four wonderful books.
these readathons are totally text based and are so much fun. it’s great to read in community and hold each other lightly accountable! i still have SO much reading to catch up on.
also shout out to Out of Print for the coziest reading socks!!
4 books
Boozhoo Books\ \ Naomi\ \ • Sep 26 2024
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Books We Talked About at Quite Time Book Club
Here are some books we discussed this week. Hope you can join us next Monday at 5pm PST.
12 books
2