Meatspace
by Nikesh Shukla
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Pub Date 3 Jul 2014 | Archive Date 6 Nov 2014
HarperCollins UK | The Friday Project
Description
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.
Advance Praise
'Meatspace is the greatest book on loneliness since The Catcher in the Rye' - GARY SHTEYNGART, author of Super Sad True Love Story
‘Meatspace is funny. Damn funny. You should really switch off your computer and read it.’ MATT HAIG, author of The Humans
’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 blender, and out comes this amazing new novel by one of the UK's most distinct voices.’ JAMES SMYTHE, author of The Explorer
’Shukla writes with precision, humour and honesty, about the isolation that social media can bring. Meatspace is a novel with many laugh-out-loud moments, break-dancing to the arrhythmia of its existential heart.’ NIKITA LALWANI, author of Gifted
‘If the purpose of a novel is to make sense of how we live now, Nikesh Shukla's Meatspace fulfills that promise #ennuiisananalogueconstruct’
– NIVEN GOVINDEN, author of Black Bread White Beer
Marketing Plan
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Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9780007565085 |
| PRICE | £2.99 (GBP) |
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Featured Reviews
Bethan T, Reviewer
I LOVED Meatspace. Like truly loved it. I think Kitab is completely brilliant and the appearance of Kitab 2 is seriously a stroke of genius. It’s the kind of thing everybody kind of imagines happening but never expects to happen but in fiction it totally CAN happen and it does, with disastrous, hilarious and truly weird consequences. The novel has a touch of the Gothic about it, the idea of the doppelganger, but it couldn’t be more perfectly suited to the times if it tried. Kitab 2 is probably my favourite of the characters, he kept me permanently entertained.
I was immediately drawn into Kitab’s world and found myself tearing through his sections of the novel which were interspersed with blog entries from his brother Aziz, on a weird life-affirming trip to America to find HIS doppelganger, a guy with the same tattoo as him (although Aziz get his after seeing the guy in the photo).
Parallels lives and different dimensions (with the web acting as a dimension in its own right) seem central to the meaning of this novel and just when I thought it couldn’t get any better there was the ending! THE ENDING. Not in my wildest dreams did I expect t find out what I did yet as I thought back through the novel it fitted perfectly. It was executed perfectly. I hate saying ‘it’ but there is no way this spoiler is being spilled here!
If I wasn’t laughing at the escapades in Meatspace I was nodding along at the quips and quirks of the characters and the quality of Shukla’s writing was integral to my enjoyment. Bloody brilliant.
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