{"title":"Selkies House","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"the-guardian-of-surfaces-by-bothayna-al-essa","title":"The Guardian of Surfaces by Bothayna Al-Essa","description":"\u003cp\u003eNational Book Award Finalist. At all times, we must stay on the surface of language. The surface! Beware of wading into meaning.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDo 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eT H E F I R S T C E N S O RThe 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAs 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Lit Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50200263754041,"sku":"11843261","price":84.9,"currency_code":"MYR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0822\/6871\/7369\/files\/11843261.jpg?v=1732684037"},{"product_id":"celebration-by-damir-karakas","title":"Celebration by Damir Karakas","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn four fragmentary stories set in the mountainous Lika region of Croatia, Mijo's life unfurls not with the chronology of time but in episodes, each in flow with the textural grain of this remote earth. With sparest of prose, Karakas has crafted an exquisite sense of place and of family within it. The result is among the most powerful modern homages to a landscape and its people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAs an unwilling combatant on the run in \"The House\", Mijo has not strayed far from home. From his hiding place in the woods above their cabin he observes through the cross hairs of his rifle his beloved wife go about her daily routine. Autumn is advancing and Drenka has agreed that at night it might be safe for his return to the crawl space beneath the house.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn \"Dogs\" Mijo is a child working on his family's land the day the local authorities pass an edict that all dogs in the valley must be killed. No reason is given. Around the table, his father and mother evaluate a warm life in terms of raw pragmatism, and the journey Mijo decides to make will become his pilgrimage to adulthood.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMijo arrives at the door of his girlfriend, Drenka, on a day of festivity in the final, eponymous story, \"Celebration\". The couple plans to walk through summer fields to the revelry in town. With her brother as chaperone, the two lovers lag behind.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe contours of the horizon have shifted with the seasons and their direction becomes as uncertain as the events that will unfurl at the festivity awaiting them.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Lit Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50200263885113,"sku":"11843265","price":89.9,"currency_code":"MYR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0822\/6871\/7369\/files\/11843265.jpg?v=1732684048"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.cziplee.com\/collections\/selkies-house.oembed","provider":"CzipLee Retail","version":"1.0","type":"link"}