Turing's Delirium
SynopsisPlot
Bolivia in the near future. Miguel “Turing” Saenz, a veteran cryptanalyst, is the most famous code-breaker in the employment of a secret government organization known as the Black Chamber. He is leading the pursuit of the Chamber’s latest target: Kandinsky, a “cyberhacktivist” leader who is staging a war against both the government and the country’s transnational corporations as part of an antiglobalization revolution. As Turing finds himself drawn into a web of murder, intrigue, and deception, he begins to suspect that his work is not as innocent as he once believed.
Story
About this book
Set in a near-future Bolivia, Turing's Delirium follows Miguel Saenz, known by his codename Turing, a seasoned cryptanalyst working for a covert state agency called the Black Chamber. His job is to break codes and track threats to the government. His current assignment is to locate Kandinsky, a hacktivist figure leading digital attacks against both the Bolivian state and the transnational corporations operating in the country. Kandinsky's campaign is framed as part of a broader antiglobalization movement, and the Black Chamber considers it a serious security risk.
As Turing pursues Kandinsky through layers of encrypted communication and shifting alliances, he encounters murder, manipulation, and institutional secrecy. The trail forces him to reconsider his own role inside the Black Chamber and whether the work he has carried out over the years has served the purposes he assumed. The novel draws on themes of surveillance, political control, and the uneasy relationship between technology and state power.
Edmundo Paz Soldán, a Bolivian writer, sets the story in a version of Bolivia where digital infrastructure and political tension coexist with older patterns of government secrecy. The fictional Black Chamber takes its name from a term historically used for cryptanalysis offices in several countries.
