There's a message in your inbox. Then, a few moments later, your computer crashes.
Leela Zahir, Bollywood actress and temperamental star, is being catapulted from the fringes of fame into a million inboxes. Arjun Mehta, computer geek, looks up from his screen to find that he does, after all, have a role to play in the world. Guy Swift, marketing executive with his own agency, a beautiful girlfriend and a handle on modern life, is losing his grip. In this age of instant worldwide communication, anything can happen and anything will...
Hari Kunzru's new novel is a heady mix of London, Bollywood and Silicon Valley. Taking in three continents and following the lives of Guy, Arjun and Leela as they make their way in the real world, Transmission is a brilliant and funny take on life at the mercy of a computer mouse.
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Leaving aside the broader forces of globalisation, Kunzru's chief dramatic agent is a computer virus that meshes together the lives of his main characters: Arjun Mehta, a sexually-naïve Indian programmer working in America who unleashes the contagion; Leela Zahir, a Bollywood actress whose image the bug zooms across the globe and Guy Swift, head of Tomorrow, a Shoreditch-based consultancy whose ongoing quest to harness the "emotional magma that wells from the core of planet brand", becomes somewhat nobbled in the immediate technological fallout. Of his cast, not unsurprisingly Guy comes closest to caricature (though his scheme to rebrand European border police as Ministry of Sound-style nightclub bouncers--"Europe: No Jeans, No Trainers"--sounds alarming believable). But then Guy's is the incarnate of the worst, Panglossian traits of the West in this callow information age. His certainty and self-absorbed fecklessness (which thankfully he does eventually suffer, horribly for) contrasts jarringly with poor, Mehta, whose American dreams tip, all too swiftly into nightmare. --Travis Elborough
"Kunzru s engagingly wired prose and agile plotting sweep all before them as the characters careen toward ruin." The New Yorker
Swiftly paced and cleverly plotted the ride is exhilarating. People
"With this second novel the entertaining Mr. Kunzru makes it even clearer that he has a flair for culture clash and metamorphosis." The New York Times
"A balance between high comedy and genuine pathos." Time Out New York
"Kunzru is as up-to-date as writers come, with interests in technology, pop culture and the economics of globalization. If anyone deserves a shot at breaching the literary space-time continuum and doing what logic says can t be done, it s Kunzru." The New York Times Book Review
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Book Description Couverture souple. Condition: bon. RO20258306: 2005. In-12. Broché. Etat d'usage, Couv. convenable, Dos satisfaisant, Quelques rousseurs. 281 pages - en anglais. . . . Classification Dewey : 420-Langue anglaise. Anglo-saxon. Seller Inventory # RO20258306
Book Description Couverture souple. Condition: bon. R320169257: 2005. In-12. Broché. Etat d'usage, Couv. convenable, Dos satisfaisant, Papier jauni. 280 pages - ouvrage en anglais. . . . Classification Dewey : 420-Langue anglaise. Anglo-saxon. Seller Inventory # R320169257
Book Description Paperback. Condition: OKAZ. TRANSMISSION - Nombre de page(s) : 280 - Poids : 155g - Genre : Anglais Ouvrages de littérature. Seller Inventory # O3472245-666
Book Description paperback. Condition: Like New. Like New. book. Seller Inventory # D8F0-0-M-0141020954-4