THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 57
wrote—but the book thrived in an envi-
ronment of relative critical neglect. At
the time of its publication, “Sapiens” was
not reviewed in the Times, The New York
Review of Books, or the Washington Post.
Steven Gunn supposes that Harari, by
working on a far greater time scale than
the great historical popularizers of the
twentieth century, like Arnold Toynbee
and Oswald Spengler, substantially pro-
tected himself from experts’ scoffing. “‘Sa-
piens’ leapfrogs that, by saying, ‘Let’s ask
questions so large that nobody can say,
“We think this bit’s wrong and that bit’s
wrong,”’” Gunn said. “Because what he’s
doing is just building an extremely big
model, about an extremely big process.”
He went on, “Nobody’s an expert on the
meaning of everything, or the history of
everybody, over a long period.”
Deborah Harris did not work on
“Homo Deus.” By then, Yahav had be-
come Harari’s agent, after closely watch-
ing Harris’s process, and making a rec-
ord of all her contacts. “It wasn’t even
done secretly!” she said, laughing.
Yahav was sitting next to her. “He’s a
maniac and a control freak,” Harris said.
In her own dealings with publishers, she
continued, “I have to retain a semblance
of professionalism—I want these peo-
ple to like me. He didn’t care! He’s never
going to see these people again, and sell
anything else to them. They can all think
he’s horrible and ruthless.”
They discussed the controversy over
the pliant Russian translation of “21 Les-
sons.” Harris said that, if she had been
involved, “that would not have happened.”
Yahav, who for the first time looked
a little pained, asked Harris if she would
have refused all of the Russian publish-
er’s requests for changes.
“Russia, you don’t fuck around,” she
said. “You don’t give them an inch.” She
asked Harari if he would do things
differently now.
“Hmm,” he said. Harari drew a dis-
tinction between changes he had ap-
proved and those he had not: for exam-
ple, he hadn’t known that, in the
dedication, “husband” would become
“partner.” In public remarks, Harari has
defended allowing some changes as an
acceptable compromise when trying to
reach a Russian audience. He has also
said, “I’m not willing to write any lies.
And I’m not willing to add any praise
to the regime.”
They discussed the impending “Sa-
piens” spinoffs. Harris, largely enthusi-
astic about the plans, said, “I’m just not
a graphic-novel person.” She then told
Harari to wait before writing again. “I
think you should learn to fly a plane,”
she said. “You could do anything you
want. Walk the Appalachian Trail.”O
ne day in mid-September, Harari
walked into an auditorium set up
in an eighteenth-century armory in Kyiv,
wearing a Donna Karan suit and bright
multicolored socks. He had just met with
Olena Zelenska, the wife of the Ukrainian
President. The next day, he would meet
Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s former Pres-
ident, and accept a gift box of choco-
lates made by Poroshenko’s company.
Harari was about to give a talk at a Yalta
European Strategy conference, a three-
day, invitation-only event modelled on
Davos. YES is funded by Victor Pinchuk,
the billionaire manufacturing magnate,
with the aim of promoting Ukraine’s
orientation toward the West, and of pro-
moting Victor Pinchuk.
As people took their seats, Harari
stood with Pinchuk at the front of the
auditorium, and for a few minutes he
was exposed to strangers. Steven Pinker,
the Harvard cognitive psychologist, in-
troduced himself. David Rubenstein,
the billionaire investor and co-founder
of the Carlyle Group, gave Harari his
business card. Rubenstein has become
a “thought leader” at gatherings likeYES, and he interviews wealthy people
for Bloomberg TV. (Later that day,
during a YES dinner where President
Volodymyr Zelensky was a guest,
Rubenstein interviewed Robin Wright,
the “House of Cards” star. His ques-
tions were not made less awkward by
being barked. “You’re obviously a very
attractive woman,” he said. “How did
you decide what you wanted to do?”)
Harari’s talk lasted twenty-four min-
utes. He used schoolbook-style illustra-tions: chimney stacks, Michelangelo’s
David. Nobody on Harari’s staff had
persuaded him not to represent mass
unemployment with art work showing
only fifty men. He argued that the dan-
ger facing the world could be “stated in
the form of a simple equation, which
might be the defining equation of the
twenty-first century: B times C times
D equals AHH. Which means: biolog-
ical knowledge, multiplied by comput-
ing power, multiplied by data, equals the
ability to hack humans.” After the lec-
ture, Harari had an onstage discussion
with Pinchuk. “We should change the
focus of the political conversation,” Ha-
rari said, referring to A.I. And: “This is
one of the purposes of conferences like
this—to change the global conversa-
tion.” Throughout Harari’s event, senior
European politicians in the front row
chatted among themselves.
When I later talked to Steven Pinker,
he made a candid distinction between
speaking opportunities that were “too
interesting to turn down” and others “too
lucrative to turn down.” Hugo Chitten-
den, a director at the London Speaker
Bureau, an agency that books speakers
for events like YES, told me that Hara-
ri’s fee in Kyiv would reflect the fact that
he’s a fresh face; there’s only so much en-
thusiasm for hearing someone like Tony
Blair give the speech he’s given on such
occasions for the past decade. On the
plane to Kyiv, Yahav had indicated to me
that Harari’s fee would be more than
twice what Donald Trump was paid when
he made a brief video appearance at YES,
in 2015. Trump received a hundred and
fifty thousand dollars.
In public, at least, Harari doesn’t echo
Pinker’s point about money gigs, and he
won’t admit to having concerns about
earning a fee that might compensate
him, in part, for laundering the reputa-
tions of others. “We can’t check every-
one who’s coming to a conference,” he
told me. He was unmoved when told
that Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psy-
chologist and self-help author known
for his position that “the masculine spirit
is under assault,” had cancelled his YES
appearance. Later this year, in Israel, Ha-
rari plans to have a private conversation
with Peterson. Harari said of Peterson’s
representatives, “They offered to do a
public debate. And we said that we don’t
want to, because there is a danger that