Culpability
A Novel
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- 49,99 zł
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- 49,99 zł
Publisher Description
Oprah’s Book Club Pick * A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 * 2026 Aspen Words Literary Prize Longlist * A Kirkus Best Book of 2025 * A Real Simple Best Book of 2025 * Washington Post Noteable Fiction 2025 * NPR’s 2025 “Books We Love”
“I was riveted until the very last shocking sentence!”—Oprah Winfrey
“The most of-the-moment novel I’ve read all year, and it’s the book of the summer.”—Real Simple
“If you want an engaging novel sure to spark great discussion about that thorny [AI] future, this is it.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“A gripping, impossibly timely thriller.”—NPR, “Books We Love”
A suspenseful family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence.
When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident.
During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.
Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
High school senior Charlie is at the wheel of the family’s self-driving minivan. One of his sisters screams from the back seat, Charlie grabs the wheel from AI control, and suddenly a couple in another car are dead. Who’s truly to blame? Possibly everyone in the vehicle, including the AI. During a tense stay at a beach house following the accident, long-held family secrets begin to surface and corrode what’s left of their trust. We were drawn to the ways author Bruce Holsinger weaves together contemporary anxieties with timeless fears: how a chatbot might seem like a friend to a vulnerable teen but still feed her insecurities, or whether an AI can truly make better split-second decisions than a human. But beyond the tech, the story probes the way inequality strains a marriage, how privilege can mask serious harm, and the danger of overindulging a child. It’s a story full of dilemmas, and we were engaged by each one.
