"A love story spanning multiple millenniums life-forms and variations on immortality the book
posits Victorian poetry as a weapon of empire insists on nature's resilience in the face of
genocide and manipulates prose into something like a new language.... Toward Eternity
recognizes both the building and burning of bridges." - New York Times *A PARADE LITHUB and
CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS Best New Book. *An AUDIOFILE EARPHONES AWARD WINNER. Negotiating the
terrain of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility
a brilliant haunting speculative novel from a #1 New York Times bestselling translator that
sets out to answer the question: What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is
quickly catching up to biology? In a near-future world a new technological therapy is quickly
eradicating cancer. The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells
which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal. Literary researcher
Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living thinking machine he names
Panit meaning Beloved in honor of his husband. When Yonghun—himself a recipient of
nanotherapy—mysteriously vanishes into thin air and then just as suddenly reappears the event
raises disturbing questions. What happened to Yonghun and though he’s returned is he really
himself anymore? When Dr. Beeko the scientist who holds the patent to the nanotherapy
technology learns of Panit he transfers its consciousness from the machine into an android
body giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun Panit and other nano humans thrive—and begin to
replicate—their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential
consequences. Exploring the nature of intelligence and the unexpected consequences of progress
the meaning of personhood and life and what we really have to fear from technology and the
future Toward Eternity is a gorgeous thought-provoking novel that challenges the notion of
what makes us human—and how love survives even the end of that humanity.
