Book of Numbers. By Joshua Cohen. Random House; 580 pages; $28. Harvill Secker; £18.99.
WEIGHING in at nearly 600 pages, “Book of Numbers” is an unabashedly ambitious novel. It considers some of the most pressing concerns of this technology-fuelled era, such as the illusion of privacy and the loneliness of hyper-connectedness. It features not one but two characters with the same name as the author, Joshua Cohen, which has become a favourite device of writers keen to seem playful by toying with meta-narrative profundities. Sprawling and messy, spanning continents and styles, the book is already being heralded as a “Ulysses” for the digital age.
This would all seem a bit much, and yet there is indeed something remarkable about Mr Cohen’s prose. From the first page it tumbles forth in a heady, headlong rush, the rhythmic sentences crammed with sharp observations, obscure allusions and deliciously unique language. The book’s plot, such as it is, is about a frustrated sad-sack of a writer named Joshua Cohen who must ghostwrite the autobiography of a tremendously successful tech magnate with the same name, who...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1Isq4rn
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