Under the Eye of the Big Bird
A novel in linked episodes imagining humanity's long twilight, told across vast stretches of time by the artificial minds that watch over what is left of us.
Hiromi Kawakami writes the extinction of humanity as a series of quiet episodes spread across thousands of years. Children are grown in factories, watched over by mothers who are not quite human; later people are engineered, reengineered, and finally outlived by the artificial intelligences that were built to look after them. Translated by Asa Yoneda, it reads less as a warning than as a long, patient goodbye, and it is far warmer than that description suggests.
Recommended by 1 Person
Anton Hur
There is just so much anxiety in our post-pandemic world. We had to get used to thinking of ourselves as not just communities or nations but as an entire species. But will we ever manage to do so, really? This novel is about the end of humanity as we know it. But it is full of hope, at the same time.
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