'Gnomon' Starts Simply — And Then It Goes Sideways
Nick Harkaway's big, ambitious new book is about pretty much everything, from ancient Egypt to a future utopia that actually seems utopian at first, until an inconvenient death disrupts everything.
Sometimes, while doing this job, I like to think about how books come to be — how the writers think, and what they're planning while sitting there in front of the blank page, the blinking cursor. It's that first moment of creation that I find most fascinating. The instant when an idea transforms into something ... more.
For Nick Harkaway, I have to imagine that the moment he sat down to write his new novel Gnomon went something like this:
Okay, Nick, so we have that crazy title, right?
Absolutely, Nick.Gnomon
