![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Kentukis are not far removed from the exhibitionism of social networking platforms, smartphones that offer tailored ads and services to meet even the most superfluous needs, and the farcical “intimacies” constructed online with strangers at the touch of a screen. It’s a resonant question for our 21st-century consumer-driven world. ![]() With the option to purchase a kentuki and be its keeper or a passcode and be its dweller, the characters force us to consider the cost to see and to be seen. But instead of parlor wall screens, Schweblin’s characters are swept up in the burgeoning trend of one-way cameras installed in plush animal robots (called kentukis). Her novel, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell, recalls Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, as both cast a wary eye toward the advent of new technologies and a society overly influenced by them. With the contemporary feel and multinarrative structure à la Tommy Orange or Marlon James, Schweblin invites us into workspaces, bedrooms, and midnight streets across multiple continents in a disturbing scenario. In its eyecatching green-and-white cover and deceptively simple title, Samanta Schweblin’s Little Eyes offers a playful, incisive critique on what it means to follow a global trend in our increasingly connected, yet increasingly virtual culture. ![]()
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