Ecoute

Who escapes being spied on or watched these days? Surely not people who keep a low-profile... A baroque modern novel about listening in.


The avenue des Gobelins, Paris. A man outside an old camera shop. Hovering, hesitating to go in. He is spotted by a police officer in a surveillance van, the officer in charge of an unofficial tapping operation deluged by the endless texts, messages, photos and posts that passers-by in his sector send each other every minute, every second of the day. A constant tide that sends his mind into chaos. But who is the man he's seen? Why is he so disturbing? He isn't sending any messages.
Is it normal not to use a mobile phone nowadays? The man's silence is suspect. The officer can't stop thinking about him, and now he's emerging from shop with a silver-coloured camera. Who is he? Why's he here? Everything bustles around him in that other world of our invisible, digital lives. The officer sees him as a threat... a local schoolboy recognises him as the Morse, a rock star who disappeared in Norway in the 1980s.

This book asks whether our hyper-connected lives - which can be listened to and spied on - reveal who we really are or the person we want others to see? What if tapping only revealed our lies?