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Stay This Day and Night with Me

Beln Gopegui author Mark Schafer translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:City Lights Books

Published:4th May '23

Should be back in stock very soon

Stay This Day and Night with Me cover

Finalist for the Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award!

This is the story of Olga, a retired mathematician, and Mateo, a college student passionate about robotics, and their plot to influence Google.

"This book has excited me more than any that I have read this year."—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"This is a beautifully written, endlessly provocative meditation on humanity's relationship to technology, monopoly, memory and fate."— Dave Eggers, author of The Circle and The Every

After a chance encounter at the public library, two new friends begin to meet up regularly. Together they decide to submit an application for Google sponsorship to an elite technology-training program. Hoping to stand out, they frame their submission as a direct appeal to the "conscience" of the seemingly all-powerful corporation.

Olga, a retired entrepreneur, and Mateo, a college student, find unexpected connection and solace in their conversations. Ideas and arguments open into personal stories as they debate the possibility of free will, the existence of merit, and the role of artificial intelligence. They ask the most basic and important of questions: What does it mean to be human in a reality shaped by data and surveillance? Is there still space for empathy and care? What could we be, what could we build, if we used our resources in different ways?

Praise for Stay This Day and Night With Me by Belén Gopegui and translated by Mark Schafer:

"Belén Gopegui brandishes her pen as a sword as she charges straight at one of the tech giants. . . . The release of this English translation is timed perfectly. It adds a literary dimension and intellectual depth to an escalating discussion previously mined by writers such as William Gibson (Neuromancer) and Jennifer Egan (The Candy House), both standout examples of fiction reflecting the relationship between technology and society."–Lanie Tankard, The Woven Tale Press

"Gopegui issues an intellectual challenge to Google, and to her readers. What, she asks, do we know that AI cannot — and is it too late to start valuing that knowledge more? . . . Exciting and bracing."—Lily Meyer, NPR

"Gopegui leavens the high-mindedness with a cool sense of irony, and shines with her succinct insights on the similarities between humans and AI...Readers will be intrigued."—Publishers Weekly

"With the rise of ChatGPT, questions about the human relationship with technology are once again on the minds of many. In this book—which revolves around Olga and Mateo, a retiree and a student who hatch a scheme to earn a Google sponsorship for a technology-training program—Gopegui explores the iterations and nuances. Empathy, corporate capitalism, and Google itself come under the microscope in Olga and Mateo’s conversations."—Alta Magazine

"Unique and fascinating, Stay This Day and Night With Me pushes beyond the political and philosophical debates of its characters to deliver a much needed dose of humanity in the face of emerging corporate, unknowable, and inhuman intelligence."—Tim Maughan, author of Infinite Detail

"Two people who love robots meet in a library. A philosophical dialogue ensues. The writing is delicate, strange, and strangely riveting: Gopegui slides between registers and scales with uncommon grace. This is a book about two human beings and also what it means to be a human being in the algorithmic age. This is a book about Google, capitalism, and the ordinary unhappiness of being alive."—Ben Tarnoff, author of Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future

"A thrillingly unclassifiable book of ideas about the inherent tension between being an individual while also being part of a community—and whether one's individual or communal identity is ever truly primary. Gopegui's novel is a study of empathy and human connection in a time of algorithms and tech giants, extending curiosity not only towards her very human characters, but also towards the corporate machinery that governs their lives, and the lives of her readers." —Adrienne Celt, author of End of the World House

"With the Digital Age as the backdrop, Gopegui creates a novel that is as analog as they come: a conversation between two people, their philosophical debates and tender connection. As a result, she crafts a potent interrogation of the status of our modern life."—Bennard Fajardo, Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington, D.C.

ISBN: 9780872868939

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

188 pages