Transmission - Hardcover

Kunzru, Hari

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241141702 ISBN 13: 9780241141700

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2004

Synopsis

Taking in the USA, India and Britain, the story of a disgruntled employee wreaking havoc ...

When Arjun is fired from his IT job in Redmond, Washington, he unleashes the virus he's been growing on his computer system. And as his digital creatures make their way out into the world, they begin to have tiny cascading effects on people's lives. Guy and Gabriella live in a luxury riverside development in London, but soon, through Arjun's unwitting agency, the operation of chance begins to smash up their perfect world.

Everywhere new viruses and worms are being reported, all referring - either through picture, sound, text or code - to the film star Lila Zohar. Suddenly, Lila is the most famous woman in the world.

About this title

Review:

Transmission is Hari Kunzru's second novel and, in a similar vein to Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, the title is instructive; it's figuratively and literally, the book's pulsing leitmotif. To transmit is, by definition, to "send across", and the migration of information and people, the destruction and the erection of borders in our hi-tech, supposedly global village, (a world where Indian graduates gain Australian accents working in local call centres) is what this novel is all about. Although to be clear, that's an "all about" in much the way that Jonathan Coe's What A Carve Up! was "all about" the Thatcherite 1980s; narrative invention, humour and satire form essential components of Kunzru's prodigious literary arsenal. (No prizes for guessing who Gavin Burger, an incomprehensively verbose US presidential spokesman who puts in a fleeting comic turn, could be modelled on.)

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

Review:

Hari Kunzru Ýhas¨ a skewering wit, wide sympathies and a gimlet eye for the killing or illuminating detail. ("The Washington Post") 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")

Hari Kunzru [has] a skewering wit, wide sympathies and a gimlet eye for the killing or illuminating detail. ("The Washington Post") 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")

"Hari Kunzru [has] a skewering wit, wide sympathies and a gimlet eye for the killing or illuminating detail." The Washington Post

"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

"

About this edition

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0241141702
• ISBN 13: 9780241141700
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288