The Book Censor's Library

by Bothayna Al-Essa

It occurred to him that she might be suffering from that common malady of writers—a lack of self-confidence. He took this as a sign that she might in fact be writing real literature.

I blame them all for bringing children into this world when we’re unable to protect them.

Every day, we take the risk of hacking the Censorship Authority’s systems to rescue the books, the research, just so we can save our collective memory. Salvage some sort of idea about what we were before. But we’ve never been strong enough to save a child, to save the future. For that—and for many other reasons—I’m sorry.”