In Dave Eggers’s new novel, “The Circle,” Big Brother isn’t the government: it’s a Google-like, Facebook-like tech behemoth, called the Circle, that has a billion-odd users, controls 90 percent of the world’s searches and aspires to record and quantify everything that’s happening to everybody, everywhere in the world. This description of life under the totalitarian regime of the all-seeing Big Brother comes from Orwell’s “1984,” published back in 1949: a dystopian classic that shot up the best-seller lists this summer after revelations about the National Security Agency’s far-reaching collection of data from phone and Internet records, and public fears of a new surveillance state.

Published October 8, 2013, Alfred A.“You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” Margaret Atwood, New York Review of Books Eggers treats his material with admirable inventiveness and gusto.” about the social construction and deconstruction of privacy, and about the increasing corporate ownership of privacy, and about the effects such ownership may have on the nature of Western democracy. 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. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world-even as her 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.

There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are sports teams and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. 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. Run out of a sprawling California campus, the Circle has subsumed all the tech companies we know of now, linking 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. Set in an undefined future time, The Circle is the story of Mae Holland, a young woman hired to work for the world’s most powerful internet company.

The circle by dave eggers