Coalescent

Transmission is the second poll-winning book, and the second novel by Hari Kunzru, who made the most recent Granta list largely on the back of his much-praised debut, The Impressionist. At one notorious point, when he declined the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize due to (an understandable) dislike of its sponsor, Kunzru's politics and personality threatened to overwhelm his writing. But Transmission, though it is certainly political in parts, is also focused on technology and the modern world (one review wrestled with the description 'geek lit'), and - interestingly to me - it seems to echo some aspects of Pattern Recognition, William Gibson's lauded and not-quite-mimetic novel from last year.

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