My Child, the Algorithm

An alternatively intelligent book of love

Hannah Silva author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Footnote Press Ltd

Published:20th Jul '23

Should be back in stock very soon

My Child, the Algorithm cover

A book about love, loss and queer single parenting co-written with a machine-learning algorithm and a toddler.

** A Granta Book of the Year 2023 **

'Raises the stakes for the rest of us writers'
ISABEL WAIDNER
'An important new talent' FIONA SHAW
'Curious, queer, whip-smart, hilarious and tender' GAIL MCCONNELL

A living exploration of undoing and redoing queer single parenting and love, in conversation with an AI algorithm and a toddler.

As Hannah Silva navigates friendship, dating and life as a queer single parent in London, her toddler and the algorithm contribute humour, play and insight. With the help/disruption of these unreliable narrators, Hannah deconstructs her story, and constructs a new one. She unravels everything she has been taught to want, finding alternative ways of thinking, loving and parenting today.

Queer, creative, sexy and compassionate, My Child, the Algorithm is non-fiction at its finest.

My Child, the Algorithm redoes what autobiography is. Funny, inventive and moving, it raises the stakes for the rest of us writers -- Isabel Waidner * author of STERLING KARAT GOLD *
Hannah breaks all the rules in order to refresh our minds. No writer I know in drama is as brave or as vulnerable. She talks to another hinterland of the mind. She writes like she is climbing a mountain naked.... an important new talent -- Fiona Shaw
Curious, queer, whip-smart, hilarious and tender. Just read it. Hannah Silva is my favourite male seahorse -- Gail McConnell
A bold and inventive meditation on the complexities of motherhood. I loved it -- Irenosen Okojie * author of NUDIBRANCH *
A work worthy to stand beside classics of queer parenting by Maggie Nelson and Gail McConnell, Silva's book asks all the right questions about art, family and love, with clarity, invention and passion -- Joanna Walsh * author of GIRL ONLINE: A USER MANUAL *
My Child, the Algorithm is extraordinary, in both its subject matter and in the purpose and power of its prose. This is writing from life's bleeding edge, driven by curiosity, by pain, and at times by howling need. There's light here, too; playfulness, humour, and so much love. Just as children remake their mothers, so this book seems, at times, to remake language itself. I adored it -- Marianne Levy
Hannah Silva's writing is searing, sharp, moving, and alive to the inanities and absurdities of her worlds. With a poet's ear and a truly poetic eye and playwright's feel for all life's dramas her talent is one to treasure and audio drama's rarest of pleasures -- David Eldridge * dramatist and screenwriter *
Hannah Silva lets bodies and rooms be the waxing and waning things of space and line they also are, instead of manoeuvrable substance. How beautiful - this is amazing work -- Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo
A brilliant, surprising, funny, moving, unexpected, unique work of genius -- Nadia Molinari
Fresh, strange, moving and thought-expanding. I was completely taken with it... It reminded me why I like to read - to make more seem possible -- Liz Berry

ISBN: 9781804440407

Dimensions: 216mm x 135mm x 20mm

Weight: 270g

272 pages