Buthaina Al-Aissa publishes "The Gardeners: Southeast, Where the Trees Are"
The events of this novel unfold in 2084, in a world emerging from a Third World War to announce a new social contract. This follows the collapse of the nation-state project and the dawn of the era of “The Company,” a colossal alliance of technology, energy, and pharmaceutical corporations that classified humans into productive “human resources” and surplus “human waste.”
As a result, resistant agricultural pockets emerged in the region, formed by groups calling themselves “The Gardeners.” They are a nearly extinct human faction that eats what they grow, wears what they sew, and preserves their memory through oral storytelling rather than writing, rebelling against the Company’s security and financial grip.
The story begins in a southern village called Al-Wafra, where a boy is on the verge of losing his legs after a bloody incursion, and his mother decides to sell herself to the Company to save his life. The family is torn between two opposing worlds: the father remains in the southern garden, planting trees, while his daughter, Habiba, learns the craft of storytelling. Meanwhile, the mother and son embark on a journey north to the Company’s domain, raising the question: who survived?
The novel is a blend of dystopia and science fiction, provoking questions about the price of individual survival when the community is threatened, and about the commodification of human beings, their memories, and their stories in an age of artificial intelligence, pervasive surveillance, and digital colonialism. It contemplates agriculture as an innate act that, in such a world, becomes the most dangerous and radical of all.
“The Gardeners” is Buthaina Alissa’s second dystopian work, following “The World’s Roof Guard,” which won the Inside Literary Prize in 2026, was selected by TIME magazine as one of the 100 books to read in 2024, and had its English translation shortlisted for the National Book Award. The novel has been translated, or is currently being translated, into fifteen languages.
“The Gardeners” is being released simultaneously in six Arabic editions: an Iraqi/Lebanese edition by Dar Al-Rafidain, an Egyptian edition by Dar Tanmiya, a Palestinian edition by Dar Tabaq, a Moroccan edition by Dar Awraq, a Tunisian edition by Dar Miskiliani, and an Algerian edition by Dar Damma.
