Boy in a White Room - by Karl Olsberg (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A fifteen-year-old boy wakes to find himself locked in a white, cube-shaped room. No windows. No doors. Total silence. He has no memories. No clue how he got there. No idea who he is. A computer-generated voice named Alice responds to his questions. Through her, he is able to access the internet. As the boy uncovers snippets of his story -- an attempted abduction, a critial injury, a murder -- it becomes clearer. But when some of the pieces don't fit, how can he tell what's real and what's not? Who can he trust? And who is he really?"--

Book Synopsis

A gripping YA sci-fi thriller by German and Spiegel-bestselling author, Karl Olsberg. The Boy in a White Room was nominated for Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis 2018, Germany's most prestigious youth fiction award.

A fifteen-year-old boy wakes to find himself locked in a white, cube-shaped room. No windows. No doors. Total silence. He has no memories. No clue how he got there. No idea who he is.

A computer-generated voice named Alice responds to his questions. Through her, he is able to access the internet. As the boy uncovers snippets of his story--an attempted abduction, a critial injury, a murder -- it becomes clearer. But when some of the pieces don't fit, how can he tell what's real and what's not? Who can he trust? And who is he really?

Review Quotes

"Olsberg makes adventurous use of classic sci-fi tropes, meticulously arranging them in a continually surprising series of twists and turnabouts to craft a pensive tale that explores questions of artificial intelligence, free will, and personhood." -- Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Karl Olsberg wrote his Ph.D. thesis on artificial intelligence. He worked as amanagement consultant, marketing manager, and game developer, and founded three award-winning start-up companies. His first novel, Das System, was published in 2007 and became an international bestseller, nominated for the Kurd-Lasswitz-Award as best German science fiction novel. Since then, he has published more than 20 books. Among them are the bestselling series Cubeworld and The Villagers, based on the computer game Minecraft, which he loves to play together with his three sons.