The Guardian of Surfaces

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

“A necessary masterpiece, proving that true fiction is not an escape into a dreamlike Wonderland but a cautionary excursion into the depths of the human condition.”

—Alberto Manguel, bestselling, critically acclaimed author of The History of Reading

“An urgent, sweeping call to arms for the protection of books and book lovers everywhere.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Meaning, metaphor, and the material are all at stake in this sly fable of a near-future won by censors who ban not just books but imagination, dreams, and desire. I’d follow these characters anywhere.”

—Emily Drabinski, president of the American Library Association

“Time will tell whether The Guardian of Surfaces possesses the same kind of world-changing verve of, say, Orwell’s 1984 . . . In the meantime, call all your friends, and especially your enemies . . . and let them know that you’ve heard that Al-Essa’s novel might, especially with its liberal use of unregulated rabbits, be even more dangerous than some already banned books.”

—Bruce J. Krajewski, Ancillary Review of Books

“An assertion of literature’s importance and the persistence of imagination, this novel echoes canonized tales of totalitarian dystopia. In this story driven by intertextuality, we follow a man as he discovers humanity in fiction and finds the fear of difference at the root of censorship.”

—Nath Mayes, Carmichael’s Bookstore

At all times, we must stay on the surface of language. The surface! Beware of wading into meaning. Do you know what happens to people who sink into meaning? An eternal mania strangles them and they’re left unfit to live. You are a guardian of surfaces. The future of humanity depends on you.

T H E F I R S T C E N S O R

The new book censor has not 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, pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter, and the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams. 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 Guardian of Surfaces is a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.