The Great Firewall

ORSON WELLES WITH A LAPTOP--that’s how Wired magazine describes high-flying software developer Daniel Skye. But Daniel’s on the verge of bankruptcy and divorce, obsessed with the best idea he’s ever had: an interactive movie/game hybrid for tablet computers that will forever change the way we see entertainment--that is, if it doesn’t ruin its creator first. He flees to Shanghai, where Pierre, an old photojournalist friend, knows people with money. But Pierre has his own agenda, helping a clandestine group of Chinese protesters. On the eve of a global conference on carbon emissions, they’re desperate to publicize the human cost of Shanghai’s real estate explosion and expose the corrupt officials and murderous property developers who are driving it. As Daniel searches the back alleys of Shanghai for pictures of a disappearing city, he is drawn ever deeper into a world of violence, arson, and killing. In the end, he will have to choose. How much is he willing to sacrifice for the best idea he’ll ever have? Fast-paced and multi-layered, The Great Firewall is a thriller for the twenty-first century, capturing the jagged intersection

Michael C. Boxall was born in England and studied English and American literature at Warwick University, after which he became a trainee editor with a documentary film company in London. When he won the Eisaku Sato Foundation prize for a paper on Japanese-European relations he was invited to Japan and subsequently became a journalist. After winning the United Nations University Prize for writing on the impact of new media he studied communications in graduate school at the University of Washington. An internship at Harper's confirmed his interest in magazines and he later returned to Tokyo as editor of Intersect, an English-language monthly about Japan. As well as writing for print he has worked in multimedia and Star Sites, about the significance of archaeoastronomy in five different cultures, was named educational CD of the month by Newsweek Interactive. In 2003 he was one of two joint winners of the $25,000 Lupton New Voices in Literature award for a proposal for a non-fiction book entitled Driven by Desire: Sex and the Spread of New Media. He has also won prizes for short fiction. The Great Firewall will be followed by a second China-related thriller, Final Cut.