今年法蘭克福書展重點非文學！

William Gibson meets Kurt Vonnegut in an ambitious debut novel of international techno conspiracy and dark comedy.

The Committee, an international cabal of techno-industrialists and media barons, is on the verge of privatizing all information. Dear Diary, an idealistic online Underground, stands in the way of that takeover, using radical politics, classic spycraft, and technology that makes Big Data look like dial-up. Into this pitched and secret battle tumbles an unlikely trio: Leila Majnoun, a disenchanted non-profiteer; Leo Crane, a bipolar trustafarian; and Mark Deveraux, a wracked and fraudulent self-betterment guru.

Leila, Leo and Mark battle with addiction, grief and the weight of expectation as they hurtle through a wildly inventive narrative in which an exploration of love and the dangers of ordering street food in Myanmar sit side by side with a plot to rob humanity of its privacy.

In our wiki-leaks age of phone hacking scandals and social networking, Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot captures the absurdities of technological advances and begs the question: if a democratic society needs the media as a watchdog, who is watching the media? As information becomes increasingly commodified, there’s a danger we could end up being more like customers of our world than citizens.

Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot is both a suspenseful, global thriller and an emotionally realistic novel about the struggle to change the world in and outside of your head. In the spirit of Chuck Palahniuk, it is a remarkable debut that announces a captivating new voice in literary suspense.

 

David Shafer is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University’s School of Journalism. He has worked as a journalist, a press agent for a non-governmental organization, a carpenter, and a taxi driver. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot is his first novel. David was born and raised in New York City, has lived in Argentina and Dublin, and travelled extensively in Burma. He now lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and daughter.