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3.5 

Gnomon

By Nick Harkaway
Gnomon by Nick Harkaway digital book - Fable

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Publisher Description

From the widely acclaimed author of The Gone-Away World and Tigerman, comes a virtuosic new novel set in a near-future, high-tech surveillance state, that is equal parts dark comedy, gripping detective story, and mind-bending philosophical puzzle. 

"A Pynchonesque mega-novel that periodically calls to mind the films of Inception and The Matrix…. What a ride!" —The Washington Post

In the world of Gnomon, citizens are constantly observed and democracy has reached a pinnacle of 'transparency.' Every action is seen, every word is recorded, and the System has access to its citizens' thoughts and memories—all in the name of providing the safest society in history.

When suspected dissident Diana Hunter dies in government custody, it marks the first time a citizen has been killed during an interrogation. The System doesn't make mistakes, but something isn't right about the circumstances surrounding Hunter's death. Mielikki Neith, a trusted state inspector and a true believer in the System, is assigned to find out what went wrong. Immersing herself in neural recordings of the interrogation, what she finds isn't Hunter but rather a panorama of characters within Hunter's psyche: a lovelorn financier in Athens who has a mystical experience with a shark; a brilliant alchemist in ancient Carthage confronting the unexpected outcome of her invention; an expat Ethiopian painter in London designing a controversial new video game, and a sociopathic disembodied intelligence from the distant future.

Embedded in the memories of these impossible lives lies a code which Neith must decipher to find out what Hunter is hiding. In the static between these stories, Neith begins to catch glimpses of the real Diana Hunter—and, alarmingly, of herself. The staggering consequences of what she finds will reverberate throughout the world.

A dazzling, panoramic achievement, and Nick Harkaway's most brilliant work to date, Gnomon is peerless and profound, captivating and irreverent, as it pierces through strata of reality and consciousness, and illuminates how to set a mind free. It is a truly accomplished novel from a mind possessing a matchless wit infused with a deep humanity.

94 Reviews

3.5
“Gnomon plays with a broad range of ideas (socio-political, technological, philosophical, moralistic), but they're not broad takes. So often when you read about a tech dystopia it's reduced to such a strawman argument built on magical silver bullets, it loses its relevancy. Gnomon's ideas have all been iterated on and refined, knock-on effects and implications considered, and explained in an interesting way. This is a dystopia where you still see the appeal and the inevitability, even as we learn why it's a dystopia. Tempting upsides, non-obvious downsides, and sympathetic champions for all sides. Harkaway's writing isn't dense as much as it's grandiose. You might call it overwrought, but in a way that I personally enjoy. He uses big words to share interesting ideas, he might be flexing a bit but it's for fun, not to show off. I think this is the first book I've used the kindle's built in dictionary multiple times, and I learned one fully new word (otiose – great word!). All that, and then he puts a patina of pulp on it, which is a nice treat. Where Gnomon falls down for me is the second half. The biographical sections can get lost in the weeds, keeping us away from the more interesting threads we've been introduced to. The resolution can't fulfill the promises made by the opening. Deep, nuanced, and expansive ideas are replaced with very locked-in takes. By the end, the pieces don't satisfyingly click together like a jigsaw puzzle, it feels more like someone's asserting that stellar constellations have one obvious and correct interpretation.”
Thinking Face“Fantastic concept, though the execution was not 100% there for me. Part of it I think has to do with the language used throughout the novel. There are many cases where some words are used that seem to almost be reaching beyond what it needs to be, giving a sense of confusion when a perhaps simpler word would achieve its purpose more effectively. At its core, this is a story about humanity and the scariness of a world in which humanity (or what we perceive as humanity) is stolen from us. The ending seems to be another layer in which the world of the novel unravels, or continues to echo, in a living, dying breath that we cling to, before it is forced upon us and we wish it to be no more. The final quote is a callout to perhaps what we should be, not what we are: "I am Gnomon. From this moment, so are you."”

About Nick Harkaway

NICK HARKAWAY is the author of five novels, Titanium Noir, The Gone-Away World, Angelmaker, Tigerman, and Gnomon, as well as a nonfiction work about digital culture, The Blind Giant: Being Human in a Digital World. He is also a regular blogger for The Bookseller's FutureBook website. He lives in London with his wife, a human rights lawyer, and their two children.

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