Transmission

Hari Kunzru

Penguin

Otago Daily Times, December 18th 2004

At first glance,Transmission looked promising: Young Indian programmer (and Bollywood devotee) Arjun Mehta can’t believe his luck when he is hired by an American IT consulting firm-only to find himself a year later living in a squalid apartment with no money, no work, and in debt to his employers. Things begin to look up when he is placed with an up-and-coming internet security company but, as the dot-com bubble bursts, his employment goes with it, and in a desperate attempt to save his position, he releases a computer virus onto the Net. Named Leela, after the image of the Bollywood actress whose image tempts people to open the email attachment carrying it, the virus rapidly mutates beyond his control-with global consequences.

The novel follows Arjun’s misfortunes and those of a disparate group of people tangentially connected to him. There is Guy, a kind of uber Bob Roberts (complete with Love Brand) whose PR company is hit hard by Leela, his girlfriend Gabriella who ends up as a media consultant on the real Leela’s latest film, and the troubled Leela herself. I didn’t care about any of them. The insights into Bollywood were moderately interesting, but I found the rest of the novel rather like cold pizza – appealing to some but not to my taste