The Olive Readers

The Olive Readers (2005) by Christine Aziz is set in Olea, a region governed entirely by a corporation known simply as The Company, which has systematically erased history, ancestry, and cultural memory from its population. The protagonist, Jephzat, discovers that her family home conceals a secret library maintained by a clandestine network called the Readers, who preserve banned books at considerable personal risk. The novel is as much about the recovery of identity and language as it is about resistance, and Aziz grounds its dystopian framework in the texture of village life, fishing communities, and the slow rediscovery of what has been taken. Margaret Atwood described it as "a disturbing and imaginative vision of the future with an idiosyncratic twist." Winner of the Richard and Judy How to Get Published competition, selected from over 46,000 entries.

Signed copy. Signed by Aziz on the title page.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth binding with gilt lettering on spine. London: MacMillan, 2005. ISBN: 1405054743. #11258.
Fine in fine dust jacket.