Book of Numbers
June 9, 2015 / 592 pages / Fiction
Book of
the Week
the Week
A monumental, uproarious, and exuberant novel about the searchâfor love, truth, and the meaning of Life With The Internet.
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The enigmatic billionaire founder of Tetration, the worldâs most powerful tech company, hires a failed novelist, Josh Cohen, to ghostwrite his memoirs. The mogul, known as Principal, brings Josh behind the digital veil, tracing the rise of Tetration, which started in the earliest days of the Internet by revolutionizing the search engine before venturing into smartphones, computers, and the surveillance of American citizens. Principal takes Josh on a mind-bending world tour from Palo Alto to Dubai and beyond, initiating him into the secret pretext of the autobiography project and the life-or-death stakes that surround its publication.
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Insider tech exposé, leaked memoir-in-progress, international thriller, family drama, sex comedy, and biblical allegory, Book of Numbers renders the full range of modern experience both online and off. Embodying the Internet in its language, it finds the humanity underlying the virtual.
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Featuring one of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary fiction, Book of Numbers is an epic of the digital age, a triumph of a new generation of writers, and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.
Please note that Book of Numbers uses a special pagination system inspired by binary notation: the part number precedes the page number, and is separated from it by a decimal point.
Advance praise for Book of Numbers
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âThis is an astounding undertaking. In Book of Numbers the wizardly Joshua Cohen relocates the line between tragedy and comedy. His lurid and high-achieving characters create and suffer the Internetâwhich is now tightening around us all. I donât know of any other work like this one.ââNorman Rush
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âBook of Numbers is a lot of thingsâa disquisition on and aping of the Internet, a dissection of friendship and romance in the Digital Age, and a doppelgĂ€nger taleâbut for me itâs most poignant as an elegy for the written word, and as a rebuke to its decline.ââJoshua Ferris, author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
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âCohen is one of the most intelligent, witty, and moving writers we have, and Book of Numbers is his most magnificent and ambitious book. This novel illuminates the mysterious and near-invisible landscape of right now.ââRivka Galchen, author of American Innovations
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âBrilliant . . . the single best novel yet written about what it means to remain human in the Internet Era.ââAdam Ross
Â
âAn ambitious and inspired attempt at the Great American Internet Novel . . . [Joshua] Cohenâs encyclopedic epic is about many thingsâlanguage, art, divinity, narrative, desire, global politics, surveillance, consumerism, genealogyâbut it is above all a standout novel about the Internet, humanityâs âfirst mutual culture,â in which our identities are increasingly defined by a series of ones and zeroes.ââPublishers Weekly (starred review)
Â
âCohen riffs impressively on countless Web-related matters, from chaos to code to venture capital to Y2K. . . . [He] also recognizes the laughs and peril at this technologically challenging stage of the human comedy and its new questions about what people are searching for, how the results may affect them, and what it all may cost.ââKirkus Reviews (starred review)
From the Hardcover edition.
Â
The enigmatic billionaire founder of Tetration, the worldâs most powerful tech company, hires a failed novelist, Josh Cohen, to ghostwrite his memoirs. The mogul, known as Principal, brings Josh behind the digital veil, tracing the rise of Tetration, which started in the earliest days of the Internet by revolutionizing the search engine before venturing into smartphones, computers, and the surveillance of American citizens. Principal takes Josh on a mind-bending world tour from Palo Alto to Dubai and beyond, initiating him into the secret pretext of the autobiography project and the life-or-death stakes that surround its publication.
Â
Insider tech exposé, leaked memoir-in-progress, international thriller, family drama, sex comedy, and biblical allegory, Book of Numbers renders the full range of modern experience both online and off. Embodying the Internet in its language, it finds the humanity underlying the virtual.
Â
Featuring one of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary fiction, Book of Numbers is an epic of the digital age, a triumph of a new generation of writers, and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.
Please note that Book of Numbers uses a special pagination system inspired by binary notation: the part number precedes the page number, and is separated from it by a decimal point.
Advance praise for Book of Numbers
Â
âThis is an astounding undertaking. In Book of Numbers the wizardly Joshua Cohen relocates the line between tragedy and comedy. His lurid and high-achieving characters create and suffer the Internetâwhich is now tightening around us all. I donât know of any other work like this one.ââNorman Rush
Â
âBook of Numbers is a lot of thingsâa disquisition on and aping of the Internet, a dissection of friendship and romance in the Digital Age, and a doppelgĂ€nger taleâbut for me itâs most poignant as an elegy for the written word, and as a rebuke to its decline.ââJoshua Ferris, author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
Â
âCohen is one of the most intelligent, witty, and moving writers we have, and Book of Numbers is his most magnificent and ambitious book. This novel illuminates the mysterious and near-invisible landscape of right now.ââRivka Galchen, author of American Innovations
Â
âBrilliant . . . the single best novel yet written about what it means to remain human in the Internet Era.ââAdam Ross
Â
âAn ambitious and inspired attempt at the Great American Internet Novel . . . [Joshua] Cohenâs encyclopedic epic is about many thingsâlanguage, art, divinity, narrative, desire, global politics, surveillance, consumerism, genealogyâbut it is above all a standout novel about the Internet, humanityâs âfirst mutual culture,â in which our identities are increasingly defined by a series of ones and zeroes.ââPublishers Weekly (starred review)
Â
âCohen riffs impressively on countless Web-related matters, from chaos to code to venture capital to Y2K. . . . [He] also recognizes the laughs and peril at this technologically challenging stage of the human comedy and its new questions about what people are searching for, how the results may affect them, and what it all may cost.ââKirkus Reviews (starred review)
From the Hardcover edition.
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