Library of Brothel

A wildly inventive novel about a utopian library, “the last offline building” where there is a place for everyone looking for real human connection. Set in a gentrified city in the present day, this kaleidoscopic, visionary work imagines an alternative community that goes against the unrelenting march of “progress,” AI, and an increasingly inhumane world.

The Library of Brothel is a real building, “the last offline building,” in a city whose inhabitants struggle to find work, housing, even a date. People are isolated, anxious, dispirited, and defeated. But the Library of Brothel is open, and inside its wildly themed rooms staffed by devoted individuals—Scrabble Room, Emperor Nero Room, Giraffe Room, and so on—customers find intellectual stimulation, and more crucially, human company, even a reawakening of sexuality, while providing the staff with steady and meaningful work. The Library of Brothel is, in the simplest terms, a place where humanity might once again thrive. But the Library is under threat by incapable leadership and outside development. Will the Library become just another AI startup or will it be a last stand for human beings?

This new novel by Anakana Schofield is her most inventive, funniest, and boldest yet—a political and philosophical work that expands our expectations of the novel form and presents a gloriously absurdist blueprint for resistance to the inhumane march of “progress.”