Zed
A Novel
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Zed
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Narrated by:
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Elliot Hill
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Written by:
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Joanna Kavenna
About this listen
"Kavenna is a diligent scholar of her form, melding a massively complex plot à la Thomas Pynchon and the wicked social satire of Evelyn Waugh with a healthy dose of Gogol's absurdist dysphoria thrown in for good measure." (Kirkus, starred review)
A blistering, satirical novel about life under a global media and tech corporation that knows exactly what we think, what we want, and what we do - before we do.
One corporation has made a perfect world based on a perfect algorithm. Now, what to do with all these messy people?
Lionel Bigman is dead. Murdered by a robot. Guy Matthias, the philandering founder and CEO of the mega-corporation Beetle, insists it was human error. But was it? Either the predictive algorithms of Beetle's supposedly omniscient "lifechain" don't work, or, they've been hacked. Both scenarios are impossible to imagine and signal the end of Beetle's technotopia and life as we know it.
Dazzlingly original and darkly comic, Zed asks profound questions about who we are, what we owe to one another, and what makes us human. It describes our moment - the ugliness and the beauty - perfectly. Kavenna is a prophet who has seen deeply into the present - and thrown back her head and laughed.
©2020 Joanna Kavenna (P)2020 Random House AudioWhat the critics say
"Kavenna is a diligent scholar of her form, melding a massively complex plot à la Thomas Pynchon and the wicked social satire of Evelyn Waugh with a healthy dose of Gogol’s absurdist dysphoria thrown in for good measure. Complex, funny, prescient, difficult: Kavenna's novel tackles nothing less than everything as it blurs the lines between real and virtual." (Kirkus starred review)
"[A] tangled, riveting parable of the modern surveillance state.... Kavenna delivers this gripping narrative with wit and dark humor, leaving readers both entertained and a little paranoid." (Publishers Weekly starred review)
"Kavenna's scathing indictment of the dangers of technology gone awry, tech conglomerates left unchecked, and the silencing of the free press is a smart and timely work of cautionary speculative fiction." (Booklist)