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I read this novel more than 30 years ago.

It begins with a (orphaned ?) little girl who lives in the streets finding a weird book. It talks, and is probably AI. IIRC, it is one extra illegal copy of a very restricted set meant for daughters of extremely rich people. Since no legal copy is missing, it is not generally known it exists. So the life of that girl is changed in an extraordinary way. This is only one thread in the very complicated plot of that novel, but I don't remember anything else.

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47

Sounds like the 1995 novel "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson.

The protagonist in the story is Nell, a thete (or person without a tribe; equivalent to the lowest working class) living in the Leased Territories, a lowland slum built on the artificial, diamondoid island of New Chusan, located offshore from the mouth of the Yangtze River, northwest of Shanghai. When she is four, Nell's older brother Harv gives her a stolen copy of a highly sophisticated interactive book, Young Lady's Illustrated Primer: a Propædeutic Enchiridion,...

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

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  • 2
    The wiki page you indicate does fit my few memories of the novel.
    – Alfred
    Commented Sep 2 at 1:45
  • 2
    @Alfred Thanks for the question! Prompted me to put it on the to-re-read pile.
    – Organic Marble
    Commented Sep 2 at 1:54
  • Barely 30 years ago...
    – user108131
    Commented Sep 2 at 6:00
  • @user108131 Well, 29 years....
    – Alfred
    Commented Sep 2 at 6:59
  • 4
    @OrganicMarble Just finishing a re-read. It's interesting to speculate on just how much of the philosophy relating to industriousness etc. is Stephenson's own.
    – Mark Morgan Lloyd
    Commented Sep 2 at 11:12

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