Harare Review of Books

335 pages.

First published Sept 5, 2023 (Astra Publishing House)

Fiction.

I know what I expected: my social media feeds have been inundated with think pieces and [tweets] posts about the value of human creative work, and how AI could never replace that, or even be creative. What I got in Do You Remember Being Born? is a lovely, thoughtful, and beautifully structured work of collaboration between humans and “AI”, about a collaboration between humans and AI.

So clever to have the protagonist be an elderly poet—someone who didn’t grow up with computers, who in fact discovers the joys of a chat room during the course of the book. She has a deeply compelling reason for proceeding with the collaboration: money. And The Company, the one that developed the poet AI, is offering lots of it.

I won’t give too much away, but the plot is pretty straightforward. What this book is interesting for is an exploration of how AI might be useful to us creatively—how we might find ways to live with it. Even if AI may never attain true intelligence, large language models (LLMs) have their uses, and can “read” and retain far more information—and literature—than any human ever will. Perhaps there’s a place for using that in writing practice? This book suggests, in the nicest way, that there could be.

A superbly written hybrid work, with memorable and very human characters (including the one you don’t expect). One of my favourite reads—and covers!—of 2023.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Astra Publishing House for the ARC.

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