Ce livre est ma première lecture d'Hari Kunzru, que j'ai choisi à la médiathèque suite à un article dans le Monde. C'est l'histoire d'Arjun, un jeune indien naïf, programmeur doué mais passablement asocial qui accède enfin au succès, le rêve américain, sous la forme d'un emploi de programmeur sous-traitant aux USA. Il travaille quelques mois dans une société d'antivirus qui va ensuite brusquement le licencier. Incrédule, Arjun imagine de lancer un virus à l'image de sa starlette favorite dans la nature pour mieux aider à le neutraliser. Mais sa création lui échappe, l'entrainant dans une situation qui le dépasse.
L'auteur utilise cette histoire et ses principaux protagonistes pour distiller entre les lignes une satire pleine d'humour de la société indienne, de Bollywood, des contradictions de la société américaine et du jargon des pseudos marketeurs, entre autres. Même si le destin des personnages n'est pas joyeux, on ne peut s'empêcher de sourire en lisant, jusqu'à une fin pleine d'espoir. ( )

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 to get his own back, 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. ( )

Wild postmodern tale of an Indian computer programmer stuck in Silicone Valley, who loses his job and unleashes a computer virus. Funny and fast moving. ( )

India programmer makes it to America only to get laid off. A half thought out revenge goes very, very bad. I would liked a more satisfactory ending but on the whole I enjoyed it. ( )

fun ( )