You don’t need to be a professional gamer or a devoted Nintendo fan to dive into Mañana, y mañana, y mañana, a novel translated into Catalan by Edicions del Periscopi and originally published by AdN. The book marks Gabrielle Zevin’s first major English-language work to be translated here, and it centers on two gifted young video game creators, Sam and Sadie. The two grow from childhood friends who stumble, collide, reconcile, and navigate the many forms a romantically charged friendship can take across a lifetime.
Set in the vibrant yet frenetic backdrop of the 1990s, a time when the video game industry was still carving its identity and not yet the multimillion-dollar enterprise it would later become, the narrative follows two minds driven by a fierce creative hunger. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is as much a coming-of-age story as it is a meditation on art, friendship, and the pursuit of meaning through play. It has earned recognition as a standout title on Goodreads, accumulated a lasting readership in the United States, and has inspired a film adaptation currently in development. The book’s reception online has sparked a wave of enthusiasm among readers, a phenomenon the author has long observed and welcomed [Citation: Zevin, Tomorrow, and the evolving reception of the novel].
An adept actor and writer, Zevin blends performance with prose in a way that feels both light and deeply humane. The author has noted that while video games are a relatively young form, barely four decades old, they function as a language that can reflect the wider world. To Zevin, both books and games are languages that describe social realities, identities, and cultures, and the novel uses that insight to explore wider human truths [Citation: Zevin on language and narrative in games and literature].
computer against loneliness
Zevin’s upbringing in New York City during the 1980s, with parents who worked at IBM, exposed her to computers and games from a young age. Those early experiences offered a refuge from loneliness and a space where imagination could flourish. The author explains that the characters Sam and Sadie echo a real generational shift: the first wave of players born in the late 1970s who discovered that games could carry stories as rich as any book. The project of telling their life through games becomes a larger arc about creativity and the many ways a life can be lived through a screen [Citation: Zevin on childhood and digital culture].
“The hardest part about ideas is deciding which ones to pursue,” notes Zevin. What captivates her about video games is their self-contained worlds that can reflect any topic—class, identity, or desire. This sense of limitless possibility anchors the book, even as it acknowledges the friction between ambition and the real world, between play and responsibility. The games in the narrative are not mere background; they are engines for character growth, moral conflict, and the evolution of friendships into something more complicated and lasting [Citation: Zevin on ideas and world-building in games].
Generation Y Concerns and Z
The book resonates with today’s younger generations by addressing current concerns such as cultural exchange, power dynamics, and issues of gender and identity—all set against the hyper-competitive atmosphere of late-1990s MIT-like hubs where tech and design collide. The storytelling steers clear of preaching while still inviting readers to consider complex social questions through the lens of its characters. At times, Sadie’s relationship with a teacher highlights the moral gray areas that can emerge when talent, ambition, and longing intersect in high-pressure environments. These elements remain provocative and thought-provoking, inviting reflection on how mentorship, consent, and boundaries are navigated in creative communities [Citation: generational themes in Mañana, y mañana, y mañana].
In the novel, Sam and Sadie grapple with whether their fictional hero Ichigo should be male or female. They question the public appetite for gendered assumptions in storytelling, recognizing that a male protagonist often sells more readily. The cover’s Hokusai-inspired motif becomes a quiet commentary on cultural borrowing, with some critics later arguing about cultural appropriation. The author herself notes a personal connection to this tension, being of mixed heritage and frequently navigating questions of belonging and representation. These reflections underscore how a writer can leverage personal experience to illuminate broader cultural conversations without diminishing the characters’ humanity [Citation: Zevin on representation and cultural dialogue].
The central relationship between Sam and Sadie—its tenderness, its tension, and its occasional distance—drives the narrative just as powerfully as the video game worlds they craft. Zevin wanted to explore every phase of a lifelong friendship and to question why there is no single word that captures the moment when two friends cease to be a couple of companions and become something more complex. The emotional core questions how grief and memory linger after the end of a friendship, and how those echoes shape the people they become. It is a candid, often unsentimental look at how loyalties, disappointments, and shared dreams fuse into identity and resilience [Citation: examination of friendship memory and language in the novel].