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. (front flap)
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Innovative contemporary American memoirs and satirical social fiction often blend deeply personal narrative with broader social commentary, a signature approach seen in the Pulitzer Prize-finalist memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Dave Eggers established his literary presence with this breakout work before expanding into investigative nonfiction, corporate satire, and youth literacy advocacy. Beyond his individual books, his publishing initiatives and educational organizations have created long-lasting platforms for emerging authors and international human rights reporting.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Boston and Illinois, Eggers studied journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before launching his career as a writer, editor, and publisher. In 1998, he founded McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco that produces books, a humor website, and literary periodicals including McSweeney's Quarterly Concern (which published issues such as McSweeney's Issue 72), the monthly magazine The Believer, and the DVD magazine Wholphin. In 2002, alongside Nínive Calegari, he co-founded 826 Valencia, a youth writing and tutoring center in San Francisco's Mission District that expanded into 826 National and inspired similar centers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Ann Arbor, Seattle, and Boston. In 2004, while teaching at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Eggers co-founded Voice of Witness with Dr. Lola Vollen, establishing a book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. He also founded ScholarMatch to connect donors with students needing college tuition support. Eggers resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.
Eggers alternates between inventive fiction, self-reflexive memoir, and deeply researched human-rights reporting. His nonfiction and biographical stories frequently center on individuals navigating severe conflict or institutional disaster. In What Is the What, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award, Eggers narrated the story of Sudanese civil war survivor Valentino Achak Deng, with book proceeds benefiting the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation to build secondary schools in southern Sudan. Similarly, Zeitoun details the experiences of a Syrian-American immigrant in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Across his dystopian novel The Circle and children's works like The Eyes and the Impossible, Eggers examines themes of technological surveillance, community responsibility, personal freedom, and civic engagement.
The Circle
