Customer Reviews

Transmission

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The dark, exploitative side if immigration, the excesses of global capitalism, and the vulnerable inter-connectedness of our electronic world is at the heart of this madcap, lively, yet often messy book by Hari Kunzru. Transmission is truly worldwide, as Kunzru paints a portrait of twenty-first century life from London to Washington State, from Southern California to India, and from Scotland to Brussels. Arjun Mehta is a shy, bright and idealistic young computer programmer who grows up in stultifying middle-class India and dreams of emigrating to America. With the promise of making lots of money, all Arjun wants is to work and be happy and live a life in magic America. So he flies west, with new visa in his pocket and romance and optimism filling his head.

Upon arrival in America, Arjun tries to make the best of it, but with none of the promised jobs materializing, he gradually becomes more disillusioned. All he sees is the "pumping of low rider cars, grown men wearing short pants like children, pastel lycra dressed men and women, and cars as mythical chariots gleaming with window tint." Arjun finally manages to secure a job outside Seattle, testing anti-virus software for a paranoid numbskull of a boss. While reassuring his parents back in India, that he's on track for early wealth and retirement, he embarks on a harried, half-hearted relationship with Christine, a sexually ambivalent American girl, who works for the company. He takes her to a hackneyed Indian movie and misses the fact that she is bored to tears. But Arjun thinks he has it made, and then with an economic downturn on the horizon, he is shown the door.

In desperation, and in order to try to prevent being fired, he unleashes a killer computer virus that features his favorite Bollywood actress, the seductive Leela Zahir. His intention is to cause minor havoc, and then, when his colleagues are stumped, to ultimately stop it and save his job. Kunzru, logically, thoroughly and systematically details the virus's progress through the global nervous system. But the virus eventually morphs into many headed Leelas and eventually becomes known as Greyday - "and informational disaster, a holocaust of bits," disrupting mobile telephony, airline reservations, transatlantic email traffic, and automated teller machines worldwide.

Arjun's virus brings together two sub-stories: Leela Zahir's new movie, a Bollywood, melodrama, which is shooting in the highlands of Scotland, includes a rather pointless foray into the life of its tortured leading man, whose messy sex life has landed him in the control of a violent, calculating mob boss. The other, far more successful story, involves the English Guy Swift, a greedy, self-serving, cocaine-fueled, smarmy young white-boy capitalist who runs Tomorrow*, a brand consultancy company based in London. With his contracts going sour - partly caused by the Leela virus - and his relationship with his girlfriend, Gabrielle on the skids, he thinks he can redeem himself with one last deal.

Kunzru is a blunt and gusty writer with a verbal agility that lends itself well to this subject matter. The plot takes many twists and turns as the three principal characters get caught up in the cataclysmic contemporary electronic collapse. The author rarely takes a breath and the novel barrels along at a furious rate. Kunzru writes with a minimalist style that draws you in, and also allows him to navigate, what is in essence a complicated tale of capitalist destruction, with skill and ease. Mike Leonard August 04.

Arjun Mehta, a dreamer and innocent, is still living at home with his parents in a middle-class Indian housing complex when he is hired to work as a computer expert in Silicon Valley. Thinking his dreams have come true, he flies to California, only to discover that his well-paying job doesn't exist--that he will be working for almost nothing and paying half his salary for housing. Employed only part-time and living in poverty, he finally gets his "big break," a job at Virugenix, an internet security company in Redmond, Washington, where he works as a "ghost-buster" on the anti-virus team. When cutbacks in the tech industry cost him that job, he desperately devises a plan: to unleash the Leela Virus, named for his favorite Bollywood actress, so he can become a hero by "curing" it.

Kunzru satirizes American culture and dependence on technology as the naïve Arjun makes his way in America. Arjun learns that poverty "does not exclude cars, refrigerators, cable TV, and obesity," and that Virugenix features "neat landscaping and plenty of designated parking." A wry, satiric tone permeates the description of Arjun's life and his conflict of values, and American superficiality is skewered. Kunzru furthers this satire with two subplots, alternating scenes of the "real" Leela Zahir's life as a Bollywood film star with scenes of Arjun, pointing up the excesses of the rich and famous and the contrast with "real life." A third plot line features a European "marketing visionary," Guy Swift, who must keep international venture capitalists at bay while he enjoys the pretentious, international highlife.

As the Leela virus caused disasters to systems ranging from water filtration to airport security and international banking and business, the three plot lines come together in a clever conclusion which resembles the films Arjun enjoys. Some readers may tire of the pervasive satire of materialism, since this is an old subject, addressed many times and in many ways. Arjun's naivete, his vision of life as a filmscript, and his relationship with a woman as bizarre as Chris are somewhat implausible, though these may be excusable on the grounds that they open the story to more satire. The relevance of the Guy Swift subplot is unclear, though the irony of Guy's fate will amuse even the most jaded reader. Fast-paced and filled with unique imagery, the novel is humorous but pointed in its criticism, an honest commentary on the transmission of American technology and culture, and its pervasive effects throughout the world. Mary Whipple

Hari Kunzru's Transmission is a funny yet thoughtful life and hard times of a young Indian software programmer who journeys from New Delhi to the U.S. to make a name for himself in the software industry.

Arjun Mehta is a naïve young programmer who has just graduated from a mid-level technical college in the suburbs of New Delhi. A naïve and sheltered young man, Arjun's primary social activity is to watch and become enthralled with the heroes and heroines of India's (Bollywood) film industry. Leela Zahir, a rising starlet, is the object of his sweetly innocent passion. When not dreaming about Leela, Arjun dreams of a job in Silicon Valley. His dreams are realized when he is offered what appears to be an idyllic job opportunity. Upon arriving in America Arjun soon discovers that this unique job opportunity is a work-for-hire scheme reminiscent of the days of company stores in coal mining communities.

Things begin to look up for Arjun when he is taken on by an anti-virus company. There he meets the tattooed, attractive Chris. Chris is a comely girl and for reasons known only to her decides to introduce Arjun to the more physical aspects of love. Of course, much to Chris' dismay the sheltered Arjun thinks that their one night stand amounts to a declaration of love. Arjun's dismay is magnified when his company's economic woes cause him to be laid off. In desperation, Arjun unleashes a computer virus in the hopes that when he finds a `fix' for the virus he will be rehired and his dream will be saved. Of course, not only does he not get his job back but the virus, featuring an animation of his matinee idol Leela in the middle of a Bollywood dance routine causes worldwide havoc. Arjun, hounded by the FBI finds himself hiding in the dark underbelly of America; dingy bus stations populated by the unseen and always avoided underclass.

Two other stories track Arjun's journey through the belly of the beast. Kunzru tracks Leela Zahir, filming a movie in Scotland, as the world's press focus on the person after whom the virus has been named. Kunzru paints a picture of a film industry beset by corruption and domineering mothers. At the same time Kunzru introduces us to Guy Swift. Swift is one of those curses of the 21st-century, a quasi new age consultant who cocaine fueled discourse on branding and product development would be hilarious if they didn't track some of the vacuous discourse I have heard from sales and marketing consultants. As the story reaches the end the interconnections between the three story lines become apparent.

Transmission was a fun book to read. Kunzru has an eye for the quirks of human nature and has a nice way of pointing out those quirks in a funny, rather than cruel fashion. Although he paints with a broad brush, the nerdiness and naivety of Arjun and the empty-headed drug-fueled portrait of Guy Swift, his broad characterization works. I found myself involved in the characters, particularly Arjun, and kept reading because Kunzru made me want to find out how the story ends.

Kunrzu's ruminations on the global economy are funny, on point, and are not overly pedantic. I very much enjoyed Transmission and look forward to reading his first novel, The Impressionist.

L. Fleisig

Hari Kunzru's Transmission is a terrifically funny satire about a computer virus, its creator and the lives it touches. Kunzru pokes fun at contemporary British and American culture, taking many stereotypes and running with them. Arjun, a young Indian man, comes to California with dreams of making it big in the computer industry, but reality doesn't make it near his dreams. He ultimately lands a job and things work out for him for a while, but eventually his situation leads him to make a desperate act that changes everything. Arjun's story is funny and entertaining, but also a bit sad. Kunzru thankfully never takes anything too seriously and has apparently quite a bit of fun poking fun at contemporary society. The novel sails along, flashing occasional comic brilliance every couple of pages. Transmission is an entertaing novel, fun to ready, funny to contemplate. Enjoy.

This sharply tragi-comic novel illustrates the dehumanizing effects of the globalized economy. While attending a programming job cattle-call, Arjun Mehta was recruited by a vocational pimp, and shipped to the U.S. as an indentured techno-servant. After he is exploited personnally, intellectually, and sexually, his emptiness reaches critical mass. Basically, he does create the Leela virus to try to salvage his job, but his deeper goal is to create a life-form. He is so bereft by his losses (which he can't reveal to his family) that he creates the virus to have something to nurture, like a baby. This baby replicates so manically that Arjun is a great-great grandfather within seconds, though. In addition to Arjun, we get to follow Guy Swift (who should be played by Jude Law in the movie) an English capitalist smart-ass; Gabrielle, his globe-hopping unfulfilled girlfriend; and Leela Zahir, the Indian film star who dances through Arjun's heart and the global consciousness. This book is written in language that is subtle and poetic. It is a gem with so many facets that it took me 3 weeks to get though this slender book. There are uproariously funny scenes; thought-provoking tapestries; and a good education. When the virus creator becomes a folk hero, the reader hopes that he finally feels the sincere love he has inspired.

"Transmission" is an immensely enjoyable offering from the talented Hari Kunzru. Kunzru takes a version of his trademark character--a brilliant but isolated young man living increasingly on the edge--and places him firmly in the 20th-21st century. Kunzru presents us with the other side of the "Asians are taking away jobs from Americans" story. Arjun is a brilliant young techie who dreams of a better life in America. Hired on the spot by what turns out to be a supplier of temp help to US companies, he's sent to America, where he waits for a job "on the bench" in a miserable apartment with other young Indians. With no money to return home, no visa if he leaves his employer, Arjun is trapped, until he lands a job at an internet security company. Then the bubble bursts, and desperate to keep his job Arjun unleashes the most invasive virus yet created, shutting down critical systems around the world.

Within this story Kunzru creates a vivid picture of young, brilliant, tatooed techies making too much money much too fast in the valley, the craziness of Bollywood, the cutthroat environment of the venture capital investor, and the rich consultant-entrepreneur whose product is thin air. Kunzru also brilliantly describes how the internet works and how viruses are spread in a way that's understandable and exciting for this non-techie reader. As Arjun's scheme fails to save his job, the Bollywood movie stalls because of its star's mysterious illness, the consultant loses his final pitch, and Arjun's sometime-lover Chris gets caught up in a criminal investigation, Arjun's world spins out of control--and then he simply disappears. The ending is fanciful but it works! I hope we hear a lot more from the young Mr. Kunzru

Transmission by Hari Kunzru moves back and forth between the lives of three disparate and ostensibly disconnected characters: Arjun Mehta, a young and delusional computer programmer from India, Leela Zahir, a Bollywood actress with superstar status in India, and Guy Swift, a globe-trotting, young entrepreneur from England. Though not as gripping as Kunzru's first novel, The Impressionist, this book does have its moments especially when Kunzru describes the struggles of Arjun Mehta in the Silicon Valley during the economic downturn - when most of the companies were particularly averse to hiring foreign professionals on work visas - in a manner which is both humorous and tragic. In his inimitable style, Kunzru satirizes not only the lifestyle in the US with its excessive dependence on technology, but also the hollow lives of the rich and famous in Europe and the Bombay film industry.

When Arjun Mehta gets fired from his job (which he got after a long struggle), he decides to create a virus hoping that when he suggests a solution, his boss will be impressed and hire him back. The virus - named after Arjun's favorite Bollywood actress Leela Zahir - creates havoc of a magnitude that Arjun had never imagined. Apart from infecting thousands and thousands of computers all over the world, the virus had an extremely devastating effect on the lives of both Guy Swift (whose story takes a particularly bizarre turn) and Leela Zahir. Overall, an enjoyable book.

Transmission is about a young Indian engineer who comes to the United States as a H1B contractor. This is an timely book but not quite a great book. It is important because it describes the interaction of the developing and developed world at precisely the point of overlap. Despite addressing a such an important topic the novel is flawed by its ending. Transmission is best in the beginning and worst with its Hollywood (or Bollywood) happy ending finish. Transmission is unsparing in its view of both East and West which no doubt has hurt its popularity but which also gives the book much of its comic punch. Here are come quotes from it.

"Boy, good programmers like you are gold dust over there. Everyone knows American college students are only interested in cannabis and skateboarding."

"The idea of American poverty, especially a poverty that did not exclude cars, refrigerators, cable TV or obesity, was a new and disturbing paradox."

"He has glimpsed what lies below, the forced motion of the shopping-cart pushers, the collectors of cardboard boxes. At least in India the street people can lie down for a while before being moved on."

"Like many business people he had quasi-theological view of computers. They were important and mysteriously beneficial, but it was the job of the priesthood to engage with them. Finding himself with no technical support was like standing naked before the judgment of God."

"These machines - which had always terrorized them in small ways, by crashing, hanging, demanding meaningless upgrades or simply scolding them in them in the persona of an annoying cartoon paper clip - were now revealed to harbor something more sinister."

Despite its flaws, Transmission is an entertaining way to better understand the world around us and well worth reading.

Arjun Mehta is a brilliant but socially inept young computer programmer in India. Leela Zahir is the beautiful young Indian star of Naughty Naughty Lovely Lovely. Guy Swift is the head of Tomorrow, an internet concept company that is better at creating slogans than actual products. Gabriella is a hot-shot publicist, and, for lack of anything better to do, Guy's girlfriend.

Things start moving when Arjun gets his big break--a computer job in America! Leela is the subject of every young Indian male's fantasies. Guy is about to lose his funding. Gabriella is about to leave him. Arjun relays his American successes to his family back in India, while in reality he is a low paid virtual slave. Then he loses his job and will have to return to India--as a failure! So, in desperation, he does something really bad. He creates a deadly computer virus based on a picture of the dancing Leela Zahir and turns it loose to create havoc.

What happens after that? You will have to read this book to find out. Let's just you won't be able to put it down as it builds toward its amazing surprise ending. Author Kunzru is a brilliant writer who grabs your attention from the first sentence and doesn't let go. His characters are engaging. The dialogue is hilarious. You can see what's coming but you can't stop it. Is it meant to be believable? Not really, but it works. I recommend Transmission highly but--don't start this book unless you have some free time! Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

With his follow-up effort to "The Impressionist," Kunzru has abandoned the British colonialism of Conrad and Kipling for the American neo-imperialism of Richard Powers and even Brett Easton Ellis (without all the homicidal fashion models). Where his debut was ominous and allegorical, "Transmission" is more lighthearted and unembroidered. Even in this new terrain, a hemisphere away and a century later, the author proves himself not only a perceptive critic but also an innovative humorist--and this accessible, whimsical, and frequently scathing novel is really quite funny.

Modern and hip, the prose style is such a startling change from his first novel that it's alternately disarming and refreshing. Still, Kunzru resuscitates the basic theme that made his prevoius book so fascinating: Arjun Mehta is an Indian youth who aspires to wealth and acceptance, and he's convinced himself that the only way to fulfill his ambitions is to advance in the dominant culture. A century ago, the center of the wannabe world was Britain; now, it's America.

Of course, anyone who's seen "The Guru" or any number of films about starry-eyed immigrants knows where this is going: Arjun's arrival in California, after months of poverty and disappointment and virtual servitude (pun intended), eventually lands him a temp job "on one of those slave visas, being paid a fraction of what it would cost . . . to hire an American engineer." Naive and lonely, underutilized and unappreciated, and hopelessly preconditioned by Bollywood-inspired myths of the American dream, he is befriended by a bisexual, tattoo-sporting, gutter-talking bohemian--exactly the kind of girl he would never find on the subcontinent. Slightly patronizing yet well-meaning, she flirtatiously introduces him to the full menu of American temptations. Finding himself at the entrance of the gold mine, Arjun loses his moral bearings: when his job falls victim to downsizing, he resorts to thoughtless criminality in a drastic attempt to make himself invaluable.

Interspersed with this main story are the tales of two additional characters: the pampered, unhappy Indian film idol Leela Zahir, and Guy Swift, an insufferable British yuppie with lots of bullet-pointed ideas and unlimited capital backing but little in the way of supporting brains or return on investment. (One of the wittiest chapters in the book describes how the coke-inspired Swift condenses to a four-word memo his entire plan to rescue his life, business, finances, and relationship--and then reduces to a single word the note to accompany a "beautiful and tacky and slightly sad" gift meant to win back his alienated girlfriend.) Kunzru deftly weaves these loosely connected, deeply cynical strands to a hilarious--and satisfyingly ambiguous--crescendo.

Along the way, the author skewers Silicon Valley, globalization, outsourcing, the marketing industry, Indian movies (including perhaps the funniest capsule summary of a Bollywood film ever written), and more. The pace is madcap, the characters are recognizable, the satire is on-target, and the wordplay is splendid. With this second triumph, Kunzru is fast establishing himself as the foremost commentator on the fear of alienation in an oppressively homogenized world.