2023/054: Gnomon — Nick Harkaway

2023/054: Gnomon — Nick Harkaway

Catabasis for the masses [p. 603]

An extraordinarily dense and layered narrative, which I had to restart twice before I was sure I understood what was going on. (And now I am not so sure that I did understand.) The setting is a near-future Britain, surveilled by the Witness (an all-seeing, all-knowing combination of AI and CCTV) and governed by the System (direct democracy, where everybody gets to vote on selected matters). Mielikki Neith is a Witness inspector, and something of a celebrity: she's engaged to investigate the death of Diana Hunter, a woman who was living off-grid and possibly spreading sedition. Mielikki is given access to the recordings of the surgical/chemical interrogation: not mere audio-video, but a way of examining Hunter's lived experience during the process. Except that, instead of Hunter, there appear to be other people in her memories: a Roman alchemist (former lover of St Augustine), a Greek banker (haunted by a shark, or possibly a god), and an Ethiopian artist, Berihun Bekele, who's producing the artwork for a game that features an all-seeing, malevolent Witness... And there's something else in there too: not strictly a person, but an entity in the distant future, which seems to be a sociopath.

Spoiler, slightly: it is not all a game.

( Read more... )