The Olive Readers – Christine Aziz

My husband and I are olive farmers, and our passion for olives inevitably means that any book title that refers to olives, in any shape or form, tends to catch my eye. What I discovered in the pages of The Olive Readers, however, was something vastly different to what I had expected.

Set in the year 2295, Aziz’s story – the first half of which took 18 years to write while the second half only took two months – is about a world gone wrong, a dystopian future where corporations, not governments, rule the earth. In this bleak imagining, technology rules, humans have no rights and water is the strongest currency.

We are introduced to this world by a young woman who works as a labourer in a corporate region responsible for producing olives in a new world order. She lives in a rural community of people who have been brainwashed and browbeaten by big business, and who now live deprived of knowledge, books, history and original thought.

Jephzat is strong willed, intelligent and mature for her age. She is fiercely loyal to her family and friends, and has, despite the suppression by the corporates, retained her independent spirit and her hunger for knowledge. So when she discovers a secret library and begins to read, her whole world changes, and the suspense kicks off.

Jephzat proceeds to join the ‘olive readers’, an intrepid band of olive pickers who not only read and gather as much knowledge as they can, but also launch a resistance against the suppression and hatch an ambitious plan to overthrow the powers that be. The colourful cast of characters display both the fragility and strength of the human spirit, regardless of the state of the world.

It is a tale that highlights the power of information, and emphasises the value of freedom of expression. Aziz also manages to commentate on the current state of our world, when she refers to ‘your world’ and ties in current international disputes over natural resources and climate change, and presents the future as a dehumanised world overtaken by corporates.

The Olive Readers is an ambitious work of writing and Aziz should be commended for her courage and tenacity to bring us a few sobering messages in a highly entertaining and captivating read.