Once the Net and the Web were new, and when the adventurous and unwary spent too much time there, flirting with each other in verbal disguise... The story of bad behaviour-- fanaticism about small rows, gender-disguised "Netsex", the spending of other people's money on vast phone-bills--has been told by others--Indra Sinha tells it in a British context where the poverty and uncertainty of the Thatcher era made everything that bit more intense and obsessive. This is also the story of the near-collapse of a marriage--he withdrew from his wife and dragged her off to meet Net chums who never showed up--or showed up and never introduced themselves...These were also the years of his growing political commitment--a highly paid copywriter, he started using his skills for good causes like exposing the use of chemical weapons by Saddam against the Kurds. He writes well about his discomfort his Net friends' games of expensive verbal sado-masochism in the face of real evil. This is a moving and wise book about a man who loved games, and came to feel that he could no longer, in conscience play them; there is real pain here, in his rejection of a sort of beauty. --Roz Kaveney

2001-08-10 Great book (shame about the covers/ blurb).

I agree with all the other reviews here: riveting book, cleverly woven together, rang lots of bells and made lots of connections for me. My only reservation was the blurb on the back and even the title, which to me suggested some sort of quirky, marginal techie subculture - interesting enough to make me look at the book, but what I found within when I read it (couldn't put it down, 400 pages in record time) was much more than this... I did wonder about the author's children (almost invisible in the story)...