Description

David Shafer’s acclaimed Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A brilliant, visionary and deeply human cyber-thriller
Deep in the forest near Burma’s border with China, a young woman sees something she wasn’t supposed to see.
In Portland, Oregon, a troubled young man crashes his bicycle on his way to work – and then gets fired.
In New York, a famous self-help author goes on daytime TV – and suddenly conceives ‘a book that would take him beyond talk shows’.
What connects these three people – though they don’t know it yet – is that they have come to the attention of the Committee, a global cabal that seeks to privatize all information. And each of them will, in their different ways, come to take part in the secret resistance struggle spearheaded by a scarily clever hacktivist collective – a struggle built on radical politics, classic spycraft and eye-popping technology. Along the way, they are forced to confront their own demons, reconsider their values, and contemplate the meaning of love, family, friendship and community. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is at once a page-turning thriller, a deeply absorbing psychological novel, and a visionary exploration of the possibilities and hazards of our online lives.

‘A paranoid, sarcastic and clattering pop thriller that reads as if it were torn from the damp pages of Glenn Greenwald’s fever journal … Reading [Shafer’s] prose is like popping a variant of the red pill in The Matrix: everything gets a little crisper’ New York Times
‘Genius techno- thriller a la Neal Stephenson, powered by social-media info-conspiracy a la Dave Eggers’ Time
‘A stylish, absorbing, sharply modern hybrid of techno-thriller and psychodrama that bristles with wit and intellect’ Maggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements’A fine example of what happens when big, brainy ideas are successfully mated with good old-fashioned plot thrust … The next time the Fiction is Dead brigade demand to know why novels deserve a place in popular culture, the constant reader might well cite this book as Exhibit A for the defence’ Irish Times

‘Exciting, funny, moving and thought-provoking’ Irish Independent

Publisher Review

A paranoid, sarcastic and clattering pop thriller that reads as if it were torn from the damp pages of Glenn Greenwald's fever journal ... Reading [Shafer's] prose is like popping a variant of the red pill in The Matrix: everything gets a little crisper * New York Times * Genius techno--thriller a la Neal Stephenson, powered by social-media info-conspiracy a la Dave Eggers * Time * [It's] possible that Shafer is remaking the international thriller... An edgy, darkly comedic debut novel whose characters and premise are as up-to-the-minute as an online news feed * Kirkus Reviews * The book's fanciful premise comes to seem eerily plausible: 'How about if a shadow government is filing away everything about you?' * The New Yorker * Smart and often very funny ... Shafer etches diamond-sharp and precisely observed contemporary satire * Salon * A stylish, absorbing, sharply modern hybrid of techno-thriller and psychodrama that bristles with wit and intellect -- Maggie Shipstead, author of 'Seating Arrangements' Moving, funny, engrossing and blisteringly smart * Time, Top Ten Fiction Books of 2014 * It is a joy to watch Shafer seamlessly work incisive commentary on contemporary life into a fast-paced spine-chiller * Daily Beast, The Best Fiction of 2014 * Exciting, funny, moving and thought-provoking * Irish Independent * Among the hair-raising flights of fancy and irresistibly urgent plotting, Shafer alights on most of the key issues of the privacy debate ... Shafer's prose is whip-smart, funny and informal * Guardian * A fine example of what happens when big, brainy ideas are successfully mated with good old-fashioned plot thrust ... [Shafer] makes you care for his characters, even the ones with First World problems, while threading chewy techno-philosophical ideas through stretches of masterfully maintained suspense, paid off by big event-driven set-pieces (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot sometimes reads like William Gibson indulging his love of Le Carre). More, he can return the weariest soul to that glorious state of teenage binge-reading, when you'd stay up until two in the morning ... simply to find out what happens next. ... The next time the Fiction is Dead brigade demand to know why novels deserve a place in popular culture, the constant reader might well cite this book as Exhibit A for the defence * Irish Times *