ABOUT
THE BOOK

2015 Longlist

The Circle is the exhilarating new novel from Dave Eggers, bestselling author of A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award.

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.
As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world-even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.
What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

(From Publisher)

About the Author

Dave Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco. He is the author of seven previous books, including A Hologram for the King (finalist for the National Book Award 2012), Zeitoun (winner of the American Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize) and What is the What, which was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award and won France’s Prix Médicis.

Librarians’ Comments

The novel warns against digital addiction. When you’re always online and sharing everything, you lose your privacy.

In the not so distant future, an ambitions talented and idealistic young woman snares her dream job in the world’s most powerful internet company. Swept away by the company’s policy of full-disclosure, she and her colleagues struggle with the questions and dilemmas of an information rich society.