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Transmission | 
 enlarge | Author: Hari Kunzru
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £0.93
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 182885
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0141008296
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780141008295
ASIN: 0141008296
Publication Date: June 30, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Transmission is Hari Kunzru's second novel and, in a similar vein to Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, the title is instructive; it's figuratively and literally, the book's pulsing leitmotif. To transmit is, by definition, to "send across", and the migration of information and people, the destruction and the erection of borders in our hi-tech, supposedly global village, (a world where Indian graduates gain Australian accents working in local call centres) is what this novel is all about. Although to be clear, that's an "all about" in much the way that Jonathan Coe's What A Carve Up! was "all about" the Thatcherite 1980s; narrative invention, humour and satire form essential components of Kunzru's prodigious literary arsenal. (No prizes for guessing who Gavin Burger, an incomprehensively verbose US presidential spokesman who puts in a fleeting comic turn, could be modelled on.) Leaving aside the broader forces of globalisation, Kunzru's chief dramatic agent is a computer virus that meshes together the lives of his main characters: Arjun Mehta, a sexually-naïve Indian programmer working in America who unleashes the contagion; Leela Zahir, a Bollywood actress whose image the bug zooms across the globe and Guy Swift, head of Tomorrow, a Shoreditch-based consultancy whose ongoing quest to harness the "emotional magma that wells from the core of planet brand", becomes somewhat nobbled in the immediate technological fallout. Of his cast, not unsurprisingly Guy comes closest to caricature (though his scheme to rebrand European border police as Ministry of Sound-style nightclub bouncers--"Europe: No Jeans, No Trainers"--sounds alarming believable). But then Guy's is the incarnate of the worst, Panglossian traits of the West in this callow information age. His certainty and self-absorbed fecklessness (which thankfully he does eventually suffer, horribly for) contrasts jarringly with poor, Mehta, whose American dreams tip, all too swiftly into nightmare. --Travis Elborough
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
A confident novel with refreshingly little technobabble December 10, 2008
Annabel Gaskell (Nr Oxford, UK)
Arjun, a naive young Indian thinks he has achieved the American Dream. He lands a job in the US, but finds he's in a computing sweatshop. Eventually he breaks out to get his own job at an antiviral software company who then make him redundant. He unleashes a virus in revenge, planning to come up with the solution and get his job back, but its transmitted worldwide and everything goes horribly wrong.
Interspersed with the main plot and taking over most of the second half of the novel, we hear about Guy Swift, a brand marketer who owns a start-up company with no clients and dwindling funding; and Leela Zahir, a Bollywood starlet - adored by Arjun, who makes her the face of his virus - which cripples Guy's plans at the worst possible time.
Arjun, and to a certain extent Leela, appear to be realistic characters, you can't help but sympathise with Arjun, even if you can't condone what he did. As for Guy, well he was a caricature of the young marketing man who lives and talks jargon, an empty shell fuelled by coke, with a trophy girlfriend and show-off apartment. I didn't like him at all - but then you're not meant to, and didn't care whether he sank or swam.
I'd have liked to have read more about Arjun, particularly after he went on the run, but the author cuts the story off in its prime after 268 pages, inserting a 25 page coda like the credits at the end of the movie Animal House which tells you what all the silly students went on to do. It would have been a much longer book without this device ...
I enjoyed the novel and I like Kunzru's style and confidence in writing about the technology without much technobabble, but given that the world is changing so fast, (it was first published in 2004), believe that it will date soon. Read it now while it's of its time.
Didn't set my world on fire June 8, 2008
Eclectic Reader (World Traveller)
A contemporary urban story in every sense. Its relevance to now is so acute that this book will lose relevance quickly as times and technology move on. I liked the cross-section of Indian/ British/ American culture, most likely reflecting in some way the author's own experience but I dont think the book stands out for its literary value.
Our main character, Arjun, a computer programmer (stet: 'techno-geek') from India finds a passion for computers and technology from a young age. Losing himself in chatrooms and code and growing a sense of worthiness as his experience and capability in writing virus code gains him respect from his fellow virus writers. He dreams of America and is sent to the States by a sham organisasion that imports and hires out Indian IT staff, holding them ransom to their Visa requirements and charging them out at a profit to US corporates.
Meanwhile, Guy, a self made London media mogul thirtysomething with his head up his backside. Running a venture capital-funded new media branding company out of a rennovated factory in the docklands his shallow relationships fail to support him as the pressure to keep afloat starts to unwind his balance of mind.
Other more lightweight characters include Leela Zahir, a Bollywood star, a victim of her own success and a puppet to her demanding mother who rides her fame and calls the shots.
What brings these people together? Arjen finds himself a victim of the bursting dotcom bubble and his job and life in America are at threat when his company is forced to lay people off. His people-shy boss (recognisable I suspect to many IT professionals) hides behind the HR rep who tries to put a positive spin on the whole experience - a great comic moment as the boss hides under the desk when the meeting goes downhill.
His new life of takeaway Pizza and his sexual awakening (with a bi-sexual co-worker whom he falls in love with) is falling away beneath him and the thought of returning home to India in shame prompts desperate measures. He creates the ultimate computer virus in order to play the white knight and ride in with the solution to save his company's fortunes along with his job. It all goes wrong when the virus ravages systems around the world - meanwhile his boss takes the credit for his solution and he still gets layed-off.
I'm not sure what the theme of this book is. Burnout? The meeting of East and Western cultures? Modern life: email, SMS, fastfood, Blackberry, executive apartments, fame, media, the world wide web? Maybe all of these things. I didn't care too much for the characters and I didn't care too much for the plot - but it was entertaining for a time and the ending wrapped up the loose threads, if predictably.
Kunzru is an intelligent writer and I'd read another of his books - but this one didn't set my world on fire.
 Highly perishable book July 15, 2007
F. X. Dessioux (Madrid, Spain)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Transmission is about very trendy ideas (how globalization and internet make us all "connected") treated in a very shallow way; the sort of coverage you could expect from those hip and young magazines announcing with boring regularity that x,y and z are "The Next Big Thing". The story could almost be enjoyable if you didn't get the impression that the author has been trying to squeeze in as many fashionable characters and concepts as possible (Indian IT geek, Silicon Valley, Bollywood, computer virus, hipped-up marketing guru, immigration, etc.). All this makes for a very far-fetched storyline.
This is one of those books so topical that the little relevance it may have now will have completely vanished within 3 years. If you're interested in how new technology can shape our future, read Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, but I wouldn't bother about this one.
 very enjoyable, and very funny in places March 3, 2007
Mr. Ian A. Macfarlane (Fife, Scotland)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've read the other Amazon reviews - this is clearly a book you like or you don't! I did. It is a light novel, deliberately over-the-top but with plenty of truth about the cyberworld of spin in which we live now. It's really a satire with elements of farce in places, and it seems to me a mistake to judge it in terms of depth of characterisation and integrity of plot - I really don't think that is what the book is about. Arjun Mehta, an overearnest, anxious, naive computer geek, is shafted more than once by his masters in the US. To impress them and win their approval (he is about to be sacked), he releases 'Leela', a virus featuring images of his favourite Bollywood star, Leela Zahir. All sorts of things happen as a result, almost too many to keep track of, and it all ends mysteriously but happily. There are wonderful set-piece scenes, though - Guy Swift attempting to make a sales pitch on a Dubai golf course (he doesn't play golf), Arjun at Virugenix (his workplace), spin sessions at Tomorrow* (Swift's appalling company), highly entertaining attempts to film a Bollywood scene at a castle in Skye, a most diverting use of language and many, many good jokes. I laughed out loud quite often, and I'm grateful to any book that can make me do that. I thought this one was witty, quite virtuosic in the writing and, in a light-hearted way, involving - and great fun.
 Ultimately unrewarding April 27, 2006
Avid Reader
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Having been gripped by Kunzru's debut novel, The Impressionist, I was left disappointed by this follow-up novel. The contrast between the two novels could not be more stark. While the Impressionist was filled with detail, strong characterisation, and what seemed like a lot of background research, Transmission appeared rushed and cliched.
Arjun the central character as an Indian programmer lacks social skills and is a dreamer, Guy Swift is a shallow management consultant with a knack for good spin, while Leela Zahir is an Indian actress with an overbearing mother.No attempt was made to introduce any ambiguity into these characters, and so having any sympathy for them was difficult.
A strong plot could have made up for the lack of empathy towards the characters, but it was incredibly weak. The subject matter seemed more apt to the dot-com period, rather than now. There was no suspense. The fall-out from the Leela virus could have provided much, but simply allowed the characters to realise the ultimate dreams. Simplistic, cliched and unrewarding.
If you've read The Impressionist, don't read this, it will only disappoint.
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