Stop whatever you’re doing right now. Don’t keep evolving—it makes absolutely no sense. Use your eyes, your ears, your hands, your mind. Look at each other, for once. Your time is running out; the era is dawning when you will be superfluous and expendable.

Loneliness, the disease of our time. Although “connected” in many ways, people seem lonelier than ever, to the point that the government establishes the Ministry of Loneliness: an agency staffed by professionals trained to listen to the stories of lonely people.

But when Mr. K. commits suicide, the Ministry’s reputation is shaken. Who is responsible for his death? Certainly not Elpida, who, while bearing an uncanny resemblance to his daughter, is nothing more than an intelligent machine.

A woman trapped in her secret relationship, a scientist who creates the perfect human replica, and a man who loves beauty more than his own child. All cogs in the same system, and facing them are caretakers, digital listeners, a confessional booth, and an entire world racing forward—at times reminiscent of a distant dystopia, and at others, the world we know so well.

Kastaniotis, 306 p. 2026