The Ten Percent Thief

It almost feels like after a horrible reading slump and being frustrated that I'm not keeping up with any of my reading plans all through this pregnancy, I'm finally feeling the FOMO in these last weeks before my due date and trying to catch up as much as I can. This time it was the turn of the very beautiful looking The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan, which got an international release early this year after being debuted previously in South Asia with a different title. I was expecting quite a bit from this book but turns out, it's even better and I finished the book in just 2 days, to my utter surprise and delight.

This is a mosaic novel, a bit reminiscent of the profound How High We Go in the Dark, though this one takes place in a much more near future technocratic dystopia, within a much shorter time frame. Set in erstwhile Bangalore but now called Apex City, run by the Bell Corp where all citizens are rated on the bell curve, this book through the eyes of both the privileged and oppressed characters, gives us a glimpse into what this world controlled by a mega corp, optimized by algorithms, and driven by themes of productivity and conformity, has turned into.

While we get various POVs, each of different age groups and professions, we see their lives closely and what motivates them to keep going - how some of them have to work extra hard to conform and ensure that they don't fall down on the curve, how they are ready to completely transform themselves to achieve this outcome, how utterly dependent every single aspect of life is on technology and how some of the Analogs are ready to fight back. Even though there are through lines between the stories, we don't always meet the characters again but even in the short time we spend with them, it's very easy to feel for them. But the beauty of this book is in how realistic and plausible the author makes this future feel - already we see ourselves living out social lives at the whims of algorithms everyday and it's no surprise that the world envisioned in this book feels like a logical conclusion. I was captivated by the writing and the while it's not necessarily a singular plot focused, it still moves at a fast pace building towards a thrilling end.

To be honest, I feel like I've not done justice to the book in this haphazard review of mine. But what can I say. I don't have the right words in me at the moment. Just know that this book is very impressive, the futuristic world the author creates very familiar and scary and prescient, and a uniquely structured tale that is easy to read as well as hard to put down. I can't wait to see what the author writes next.