The Secret Life: Three True Stories

Review For prose, try Andrew O'Hagan's The Secret Life on the wilder shores and darker characters of the internet. It's funny, neatly written and deeply thought-provoking. -- Andrew Marr ― New Statesman's Books of the Year 2017 O'Hagan is an immensely engaging writer: wry and witty, and insightful ... despite their technological background, these are ultimately human stories and O'Hagan tells them superbly. -- Ian Critchley ― Sunday Times Altogether, The Secret Life is nothing less than an affirmation that using words well still matters, even now. -- David Sexton ― Evening Standard O'Hagan [is] a vivid and meticulous writer ... at the core of this excellent collection we glimpse the unbridgeable difference between the real and the invented. -- Andrew Anthony ― Observer It is a tribute to O'Hagan's quiet and effective betrayal of Assange that the reader's ambivalence towards the Wikileaker does not prevent the reader's gradual antipathy. -- David Aaronovitch ― The Times The theme is identity in the digital age and [O'Hagan's] three subjects are exquisitely fit for purpose . Thrilling. ― ESQUIRE O'Hagan's prose is always a delight. The cadence of his sentences, the way in which he balances extension and brevity, the unspooling and the reeling in, is a masterclass in the art of prose. This is not just a good book, but a necessary one. -- Stuart Kelly ― Scotland on Sunday As one of the most prominent and authoritative essayists in the country, O'Hagan demonstrates the cardinal skills of the genre: a boundless curiosity, an eye for novelistic detail, and a lucid, effortless prose style ... O'Hagan's willingness to put himself into morally ambiguous situations allows him to explore the distinction between what is verifiable, and what is make believe ... [he is] prepared to take uncomfortable risks to find answers for our times. -- Rosemary Goring ― The National (Scotland) ['Ghosting'] is a delightfully beady and unforgiving account of the months O'Hagan spent with Assange ― Mail on Sunday [A] triptych of artful essays . 'Ghosting' is O'Hagan at his very best: eloquent, insightful, honest and dedicated. It is hard to think of a better subject for a writer whose work as so often been drawn to personality and celebrity. ― Sunday Herald (Scotland) Andrew O'Hagan is a writer of uncommon skill and craft . Blending fiction and 'truth', reportage with narrative fiction, mystery with excessive clarity - this is a formidable collection from a writer determined to chart the revolutions of online with appropriate colour and nuance. ― Mr Hyde Product Description The slippery online ecosystem is the perfect breeding ground for identities: true, false, and in between. We no longer question the reality of online experiences but the reality of selfhood in the digital age. In The Secret Life: Three True Stories, Andrew O'Hagan issues three bulletins from the porous border between cyberspace and the 'real world'. 'Ghosting' introduces us to the beguiling and divisive Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose autobiography the author agrees to ghostwrite with unforeseen-and unforgettable-consequences. 'The Invention of Ronnie Pinn' finds the author using the actual identity of a deceased young man to construct an entirely new one in cyberspace, leading him on a journey into the deep web's darkest realms. And 'The Satoshi Affair' chronicles the strange case of Craig Wright, the Australian web developer who may or may not be the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, and who may or may not be willing, or even able, to reveal the truth. What does it mean when your very sense of self becomes, to borrow a phrase from the tech world, 'disrupted'? Perhaps it takes a novelist, an inventor of selves, armed with the tools of a trenchant reporter, to find an answer. Book Description A groundbreaking examination of identity, secrecy, and the relationship between the individual, the state, and technology. About the Author Andrew O'Hagan is one of his gene