Whiskey Tango Foxtrot - Softcover

Shafer, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241972760 ISBN 13: 9780241972762

Publisher: Penguin, 2015

Synopsis

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 ą la Neal Stephenson, powered by social-media info-conspiracy ą 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

About this title

About the Author

David Shafer is a graduate of Harvard and the Columbia Journalism School. He has lived in Argentina and Dublin, and has been a journalist, sometimes a carpenter, once a taxi driver and briefly a flack for an NGO. He now lives in Portland with his wife, daughter, and son.

Review

"Is it too late to nominate a candidate for novel of the summer? . . . A paranoid, sarcastic and clattering pop thriller . . . Mr. Shafer gets the playfulness-to-paranoia ratio about exactly right. . . . He's got a sick wit and a high style. Reading his prose is like popping a variant of the red pill in The Matrix: Everything gets a little crisper. . . . Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a page-turner, yet many more "literary" writers will, I suspect, envy Mr. Shafer's tactile prose. His eye is hawklike. . . . Mr. Shafer has written a bright, brash entertainment, one that errs, when it errs at all, on the side of generosity, narrative and otherwise. It tips you, geekily and humanely, through the looking glass."―Dwight Garner, New York Times

"Genius techno-­thriller ą la Neal ­Stephenson, powered by social-media info-conspiracy ą la Dave Eggers."―Lev Grossman, Time

"Zinging with wit and pop culture savvy . . . Shafer's writing is hip, wickedly hilarious, cutting edge, and ultimately concerned with old-fashioned notions of morality and redemption. . . His inventive, comic, dystopian semi-thriller restored my faith in fiction."―Mark Lindquist, Seattle Times

"Smart, funny . . . A techno-thriller with a soul . . . Shafer etches diamond-sharp and precisely observed contemporary satire."―Laura Miller, Salon

"A unique literary treat . . . As ambitious a fiction debut as you're ever likely to encounter . . . At turns the novel feels like a breakneck spy thriller, until, just around the next corner it morphs into a darkly comedic look at the realities of the human condition in our increasingly technology-fueled world."―Brooke Wylie, Examiner.com

"Shafer's savvy, sardonic take on our social media- and Big Data-worshiping society is as current as your Twitter feed..Just in time for your August beach trip, put Whiskey on your Amazon Wish List. As if they don't already know you want it."―Patty Rhule, USA Today

"Shafer hits all the right buttons in his debut as he mixes crime fiction, espionage, and SF in a darkly comic novel."―Publishers Weekly (starred)

"An edgy, darkly comedic novel whose characters and premise are as up-to-the-minute as an online news feed but as classic as the counterculture rebellions once evoked by Edward Abbey and Ken Kesey...Shafer's arch prose, comedic timing and deft feel for shadowy motives in high places are reminiscent of the late Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate), only with sweeter, sweeper characterizations...It's possible that Shafer is remaking the international thriller into something more humane and thus more credible."―Kirkus Reviews

"Hilarious, moving, and wildly ambitious, David Shafer's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot reads like a plot against America dreamed up by the NSA and then ghostwritten by Don DeLillo-a love story-cum-international thriller about our surveillance society that's so convincingly paranoid you'll tape over your webcam. Forget debut: it marks the arrival of a major new writer."―Adam Ross, author of Mr. Peanut

"Roaming from Burma to Oregon to a mysterious ship in the open ocean, David Shafer's debut novel is a stylish, absorbing, sharply modern hybrid of techno thriller and psychodrama that bristles with wit and intellect and offers a dark, incisive vision of the global consequences of turning our lives into collectable data. This book will stay with you long after you've finished it." ―Maggie Shipstead, author of Astonish Me

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0241972760
• ISBN 13: 9780241972762
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432