Christelle Dabos on Empathy, Doing Good, and How We Fill Ourselves Up

Literary Hub, in a piece published on Monday, shares how Christelle Dabos traced the origins of her novel We back to a lingering question about an innate urge to do good. She recounts a 2016 morning of hot chocolate and a microwave beep that sparked the idea of a collective human instinct, inspired by everything from The Matrix to Sense8. Dabos describes how she built an imagined order of chivalry, recruited knights on early messenger services, and eventually wove those what‑ifs into a story where empathy is biologically programmed. The novel We, exploring the tension between forced altruism and individual desire, is now out from Europa Editions.

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