Meatspace - Softcover

Shukla, Nikesh

3.29

418 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007582218 ISBN 13: 9780007582211

Publisher: The Friday Project, 2014

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The second novel from Costa First Novel Award shortlisted author Nikesh Shukla.

'The first and last thing I do every day is see what strangers are saying about me.'

Kitab Balasubramanyam has had a rough few months. His girlfriend left him. He got fired from the job he hated for writing a novel on company time, but the novel didn’t sell and now he’s burning through his mum’s life insurance money. His father has more success with women than he does, and his Facebook comments get more likes. Kitab is reduced to spending all of his time in his flat with his brother Aziz, coming up with ideas for novelty Tumblrs and composing amusing tweets. But now even Aziz has left him, travelling to America to find his doppelganger.

So what happens when Kitab Balasubramanyam’s only internet namesake turns up on his doorstep and insists that they are meant to be friends?
Meatspace is a hilarious and troubling analysis of what happens when our lives become nothing more than an aggregation of shared content, when our online personas are more interesting than real life. A brilliant follow-up from an acclaimed young novelist writing at the sharp edge of modern life.

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Review:

‘Like Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, this novel captures
a cultural moment’
– Guardian

‘An anarchic, self-involved and admirably honest portrait of
a bookish life lived in the brave new digital world’
– New Statesman

‘Chilling’
– Observer

‘Buzzing with streetwise smarts and satirical barbs, it’s a
thoughtful, often hilarious, meditation on a young writer’s
loneliness in the digital age’
– Independent on Sunday

‘Brilliant stuff ’
– Londonist

‘Hilarious and disturbing’
– Stylist

‘Meatspace is funny. Damn funny. You
should really switch off your computer and read it’
– Matt Haig, author of The Humans

‘Meatspace is the greatest book on loneliness since The Catcher in the Rye’
– Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

‘Totally original and funny and humane’
– Sathnam Sanghera, author of The Boy with The Topknot

‘Meatspace is, simply, one of the finest novels I have ever read
about modern life and modern living. Douglas
Coupland, Junot Diaz, Chuck Palahniuk and Jennifer Egan:
stick them in a blendr, and out comes this amazing new novel
by one of the UK’s most distinct voices’
– James Smythe, author of The Machine

‘Very funny and I’d recommend it to anyone’
– Rick Edwards in the Metro

About the Author:

Nikesh Shukla is a British Asian writer of fiction and television. His debut novel about Indian kids in a hip hop band, Coconut Unlimited was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2010 and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2011. In 2013, he released a novella about learning to cook Gujarati food, called The Time Machine , donating all his proceeds to Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.

His short stories have been featured in the following places: Best British Short Stories 2013, Five Dials, The Moth Magazine, Pen Pusher, The Sunday Times, Book Slam, BBC Radio 4, First City Magazine and Teller Magazine. He has written for the Guardian, Esquire and BBC 2. He has, in the past, been writer in residence for BBC Asian Network and Royal Festival Hall.

He also co-hosts a nerdier podcast with sci-fi writer James Smythe, called Meat Up, Hulk Out. He has performed in Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta and was recently at Karachi Literature Festival talking about the Diaspora.He likes Spider-man comics. A lot.

This is his second novel, Meatspace.

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