With The Guardian’s recent revelations about the use of Pegasus spyware by governments to repress their citizens, snooping is much on our minds. Boundaries both personal and national, private detectives, hackware and politically motivated imprisonments can be found in that swag bag, and so can some of its outcomes: namely, false accusations and seemingly hopeless fights for the truth. Can the freedom to speak survive in an age when all speech is suspect? If you commit a crime in the name of the common good and somebody rats you out, should you be excused? What does it feel like to be anonymously denounced and wrongly accused of the transgression du jour during a moral panic? Why are secret prisons so destructive, not only to those imprisoned but also to the imprisoners?

We humans have been pondering such questions for a very long time, and here come some new variations. Read on, Dear Reader, while reading is still allowed. (But who’s that looking over your shoulder?)

⇒ Read more book reviews by Margaret Atwood