The Circle
Published in 2013, The Circle is Dave Eggers's satirical near future novel about a powerful Silicon Valley company that fuses the ambitions of Google, Facebook, and Apple. Twenty four year old Mae Holland feels she has won the career lottery when she lands a job at the Circle's sprawling California campus, where employees are encouraged to share everything, attend every event, and trust the company with their data, health, and politics. As Mae rises within the firm she becomes the face of a campaign for total transparency, wearing a body camera and broadcasting her life around the clock, while a small group of insiders warns that the Circle is closing in on something far more dangerous than convenience. Eggers writes with deadpan clarity about the language of openness and connection, and the novel anticipated debates about social media, privacy, and the corporate harvesting of personal data.
What you might want to know about The Circle
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Dave Eggers's dystopian satire about a young woman who joins a Silicon Valley tech giant promising total transparency.
Eggers does not name a single model, but it clearly draws on Google, Facebook, and other major tech firms of the early 2010s.
Yes, a 2017 film starring Emma Watson and Tom Hanks, though many readers feel the novel is sharper.
The Circle was written by Dave Eggers, published in 2013 by Penguin Books.
The Circle is 491 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Circle takes most readers 7 to 11 hours to finish.
The Circle is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
