The metropole is a world of data-driven design and addled market saturation. It’s a place where every decision, every movement is tracked and interpreted by the network to curate content for the comfort and containment of its citizens, where imagination and fiction are suppressed, and where books have been abandoned in favour of instant gratification. Against this backdrop, a loose gathering of subversives collects the scraps of texts left behind. Calling themselves free readers, they seek to reconstruct a library from fragments away from the watchful eye of the feared committee for public safety. But what begins as the story of four people drawn to a band of literary misfits becomes an epic quest for truth in a world of lies and a narrative conscious of its own fictions. -- Back cover.