Novel, LITERATURA RANDOM HOUSE (September 2017)
An intergenerational novel that dissects human relationships and criticizes social inequality and technological dehumanization.
Two generations, two lives that were not called to meet, will intimidate Google
This novel is the story of Mateo and Olga, as well as a job application with Google as the recipient. Mateo is twenty-two, interested in robots, and obsessed with discovering whether or not merit could be used to measure the world of human relationships. Olga is a mathematician and entrepreneur in the area of forecasting and decision making using statistical models. Like the killer and the victim in detective novels, the two meet in a library, and the magical objects that bring them together are books about robotics. This could be a love story in the sense that encounters, dialog, and the desire to hear the other person’s voice create a common narrative. And because, as in love stories, their coming together is also a clash between two different ways of being and understanding the world. Mateo has his entire life ahead of him, and refuses to accept that that life cannot be written from a position of freedom. Olga, who is far past her halfway point, is not afraid to relegate herself to the bottom of a drawer. They are united by the same will to understand and feel what happens when a machine realises it’s a machine, when a robot realises it’s a robot.
The story of an encounter, two bodies, two intelligences. A young Dante and a Beatrice who is almost old travel through a space that is not Heaven, but not Hell either.
“Belén Gopegui makes consummate use of the novel as an instrument of political inquiry, reflection and interpelation, in the broadest sense.” Ignacio Echevarría
'El poder de la novela es pequeño pero incontrolable', Reseña, El País, 20/09/2017
'El poder de Google no es democrático', Reseña, Público, 20/09/2017
'Cinco notas sobre Quédate este día y esta noche conmigo', por Gonzalo Torné, CXT, 17/10/2017