Tekno – Broni

Broni is an eight-year-old boy living in a city of the future. There, all of life runs through technological systems, and even food is no longer natural. Then one night the system develops a fault and the Memory of words goes out. Fairy tales, stories and dictionaries vanish from the computers, while every other source of words was burned long ago.

Little by little the Inhabitants begin to freeze, so Broni must cross the Boundary-Line to find the cure, which lies in the world of the Ancients. They live outside the city, without technology, entirely by the laws of nature.

Meeting Guri Këmbëza, a ten-year-old who loves nothing better than running about barefoot and enjoying himself, gives Broni the heart for the longest journey of his life.

The two boys set out after the magic cure, coming to know one another along the way and facing countless difficulties and the strangest of adventures. On the road they meet many people, all of them in old trades, woodcutters, blacksmiths, fishermen, musicians, who did their work without computers or robots.

Their meeting with the Hermit opens up a completely new world, and they discover that a book is the cure for the mind and the spirit. The worlds the two boys come from differ greatly, but what they share is what saves everyone.

The book draws fine humour out of the misunderstandings between young Broni, who comes from a technological world and learned everything he knows through the Computer, and Këmbëza and the other Ancients, whose speech is rich and full of idiom. Children's own vocabulary grows along the way, by way of enjoyment.

The novel is not simply a contest between the new technological world and the old one where everything was made by hand. It shows children that technology genuinely brings much that is good, but that everything should be used in measure, without losing contact with nature. The Boundary-Line is that fine balance we must keep so as not to lose our link with the natural world.