Belén Gopegui

They want to find out everything about you except who you are.  

León is a spy whose work bears no resemblance to what happens in the James Bond films. Instead, he is employed by one of those large companies dedicated to surveillance and data control, who know everything about us. However, even today there are people who elude this scrutiny and leave no digital footprint. This is the case of Jonás, a shopkeeper who loves to chat with his customers, and Casilda, an activist in a clandestine anti-establishment group.

One day Jonás and Casilda meet and fall in love and they become the subject of León’s nosy, meddling surveillance. Neither of them has any idea they are being spied on by León. And he also does not know that his investigations into the couple are being commandeered by a tenacious spy from a rival company, who in turn is being spied upon by a larger multinational.

This novel about spies and their victims offers a deep and careful reflection on the control and surveillance which permeate our lives in this era of large technological companies.

“A beautifully written, endlessly provocative meditation on humanity’s relationship to technology, monopoly, memory, and fate.”—Dave Eggers on Stay This day and Night with Me

“Belén Gopegui makes consummate use of the novel as an instrument of political inquiry, reflection and interpellation, in the broadest sense.”—Ignacio Echevarría

“To break the barriers between the individual and the collective, the private and the public. That’s one of the narrative projects pursued by Belén Gopegui.” —Rafael Conte 

"Don't pass it by, this book speaks to us: we are the ones being followed."—Domingo Ródenas de Moya, Babelia, El País

“...a flare launched into the sky as if to say, ‘We’re here, we know who you are, don’t expect us to give in to despair!’ I feel like this is a tremendously hopeful book.” —Bob Pop, La Marea

“A novel of spies and unyielding militants in which four very different people remind us that the powers that be still have some work to do to decipher who we are and what keeps us from giving up.” –Ignacio Pato, Eldiario.es 

“Belén Gopegui has created a challenging work, part thriller, part novel of ideas, posing questions, probing answers, and opening up to lyricism, to a language and imagery that intertwine to produce flashes of meaning. At the core of her novel, however, there is something else: the idea that literature can be a place to stir up debate, to think about the world and propose alternatives; and from there, gain momentum to move forward, arming oneself collectively.” – El Placer de la Lectura

“If there’s one thing Gopegui has once again reminded us, it’s that literature bears witness to two things: how to endure powerlessness and how to confront power. And although the former is focused on more than the latter, now this willingness to go beyond the ideals that resist the indiscriminate forces of power is appearing ‘between the surveillance and the light’.” – Ricardo Baixeiras, El Periódico