Stay This Day and Night with Me by Belén Gopegui

Spanish writer Belén Gopegui presents her book “Stay This Day and Night with Me,” together with translator Mark Schafer, in a virtual event hosted by City Lights.

Stay This Day and Night with Me

After a chance encounter at the public library, two new friends begin to meet up regularly. Together they decide to submit an application for Google sponsorship to an elite technology-training program. Hoping to stand out, they frame their submission as a direct appeal to the “conscience” of the seemingly all-powerful corporation.

Olga, a retired entrepreneur, and Mateo, a college student, find unexpected connections and solace in their conversations. Ideas and arguments open into personal stories as they debate the possibility of free will, the existence of merit, and the role of artificial intelligence. They ask the most basic and important of questions: What does it mean to be human in a reality shaped by data and surveillance? Is there still space for empathy and care? What could we be, what could we build, if we used our resources in different ways?

About the writer

Belén Gopegui burst onto the Spanish literary scene in 1993 with her debut La escala de los mapas (The Scale of Maps, City Lights, 2011,) which was hailed as a masterpiece. She has since published six more novels, stories, young people’s fiction, and screenplays, and several of her books have been adapted for cinema. Gopegui was born and lives in Madrid, Spain.