Reading a book about reading books is like entering a hall of mirrors: the experience is at once fascinating and disturbing. Like other stories about books and writing, The Book Censor’s Library drags the reader into itself, claiming to be one kind of book but unexpectedly (and imperceptibly) turning into another. Even the title throws the reader off guard. Why would a book censor have a library?

It makes sense that a book about one man standing up to an autocratic regime intent on destroying the past would itself be steeped in the classics. Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland, Zorba the Greek, and 1984 play prominent roles, popping up like human characters just when they’re needed the most. Also appropriate is the fact that none of the characters in Al-Essa’s novel has a name; we know them only as “the Book Censor,” “the Book Censor’s daughter,” “the Secretary,” and “the Bookseller.” In a world where surface meanings take priority and interpretation is banned, no one needs a distinguishing name.

The Book Censor’s first day on the job is filled with indecision and fear. How will he know what needs to be censored and what does not? Then he remembers that bookstores are filled with mindless texts about how to live a happy, boring, empty life. Readers are repeatedly told to stare at posters of the fearless leader, to wear their khaki uniforms, and to send their children to the rehabilitation center as soon as they show signs of imagination. Follow the rules, and life will be good. All of this made sense to the Book Censor before he became a Book Censor. Now, not so much. And by the way, why are so many white rabbits running around the Censorship Authority Building?

Reading Zorba the Greek, the Book Censor develops a full-blown addiction to books. They fill his bed and his bureau. In keeping with the text’s magical realism, the books also take an interest in the Book Censor, biting his wife and dragging him into an abyss of uncertainty about his choices. Then Al-Essa drops in the most important character other than the protagonist—his daughter. Wearing baby powder (or, as the little girl calls it, “fairy dust”) in her hair and sparkly shoes, and claiming that she knows a wolf with a grandma in its stomach, the Book Censor’s only child embodies classic children’s literature without having ever heard those stories. Her rampant imagination and uncanny literary knowledge makes her a target for government rehabilitation, but the Book Censor can’t bear the idea of turning her in, knowing that the children sent to those camps never come out.

The Book Censor eventually realizes that some of his colleagues are part of a resistance group intent on saving books from an annual book-burning ceremony known as Purification Day. This realization gives him the confidence to read even more and to save as many books as he can. As the Secretary at his office explains: “They’re changing the past, and we need to protect our collective memory. That way, when this world falls, as it’s destined to do, we’ll have somewhere to start from.” Quoting 1984, he notes: “Who controls the past […] controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

The more the Book Censor reads—1984 shakes him to his core—the faster everything unravels. He learns about a vast Labyrinth (hello, Borges!) housing millions of tempting books destined for the fire; there’s also a bookstore with a cellar filled with banned texts. After his daughter is caught with a banned book, she is taken by government officials to a rehabilitation center. Amid the rising chaos, the reader realizes that the Book Censor has started thinking in metaphors (“The woman grinned like a Cheshire cat”) and understanding that the white rabbits are physical manifestations of Alice in Wonderland bursting through the surface of reality.

As Purification Day approaches, the Book Censor escapes his mental prison, determined to rescue his daughter from the rehabilitation center. At this point he discovers that the manuscript the Bookseller has been writing is actually about none other than himself. This sudden, brilliant shift into metafiction forces the reader to reset expectations for what will happen next. Does the Book Censor ever save his daughter? What happens to all of those books in the Labyrinth? Like any cliffhanger, the ending is a narrative rupture that leaves behind loose ends, but perhaps that open-endedness is exactly what Al-Essa wishes to offer.

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Bothayna Al-Essa is the bestselling Kuwaiti author of numerous novels, children’s books, and books on writing. Winner of the 2021 Sharjah Award for Creativity, The Book Censor’s Library is Al-Essa’s third novel to appear in English, following Lost in Mecca and All That I Want to Forget. She is the founder of Takween, an acclaimed bookshop and publisher in Kuwait. In 2023, Al-Essa was author-in-residence at the British Centre for Literary Translation, and she is a two-time recipient of Kuwait’s Nation Encouragement Award. 

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Based in Dubai, Ranya Abdelrahman is a translator of Arabic literature into English. After working for more than sixteen years in information technology, she joined the Emirates Literature Foundation to pursue her interest in books, reading, and translation. Abdelrahman has published translations in ArabLit Quarterly and The Common, and is the translator of Out of Time, a short story collection by Palestinian author Samira Azzam. 

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Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic whose work has been recognised by English PEN, the Anglo-Omani Society, and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, among others. Her translations include Black Foam by Haji Jabera and What Have You Left Behind by Bushra al-Maqtari. In 2025, she will be Princeton’s Translator in Residence. She is based in Cambridge, UK, and her website is sawadhussain.com.

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Rachel Cordasco is a Wisconsin-based independent scholar and artist.