Wednesday on Zenda. Foreign nonfiction Wednesday. Wednesday, in this case, about The Hotel of Dreams, a novel by the Moroccan-American author Laila Lalami (Rabat, 1968) that has just been translated into Spanish by Esther Cruz Santaella for the publisher Sexto Piso. Starting from a premise that is as ingenious as it is unsettling —a woman is detained on suspicion, drawn from the information provided by an algorithm, that she may pose a danger to her partner—, Lalami builds an ethical-technological parable that engages in a sharp dialogue with the way, today, our most intimate relationships are mediated also by invisible powers and controls.
The publisher itself notes, about the work: “Sara returns home after attending a conference abroad when several agents of the Risk Assessment Administration detain her at the airport.
An algorithm, fed with data obtained from her dreams, has determined that she represents an imminent risk to the person she loves most: her husband. Although she has committed no crime, she must remain twenty-one days in a detention center until her risk index becomes acceptable again.
What at first seems a temporary measure soon reveals its true nature. The breaking of such strict as well as shifting rules extends her stay, while the separation from her family, the uncertainty and the remorseless logic of the system tighten the noose around her. When suspicion weighs more than the facts, reclaiming freedom no longer depends solely on one’s own actions.
With prose of extraordinary precision and a tension that leaves no quarter, Laila Lalami turns a premise as disturbing as it is plausible into a deeply human novel about love, freedom, and the last territory we believed inviolate: our own privacy. A story about a future terrifyingly close in which the promise of security can become the perfect tool to rob us of our rights.”
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Author: Laila Lalami. Title: The Hotel of Dreams. Translation: Esther Cruz Santaella. Publisher: Sexto Piso. Sales: Todos tus libros.