Luminarium

This Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning novel is a “dizzyingly smart and provocative” look at technology, spirituality, and the search for meaning (Dave Eggers).

A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year

Named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Austin Chronicle, and Kansas City Star

Twin brothers Fred and George Brounian were once co-CEOs of a New York City software company devoted to the creation of utopian virtual worlds. Now, as two wars rage and the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, George is in a coma; control of the company has been wrenched away by a military contracting conglomerate; and Fred has moved back in with his parents.

Broke and alone, Fred is led by an attractive woman into a neurological study promising to give him “peak” experiences and a newfound spiritual outlook on life. But as the study progresses, reality becomes increasingly porous—and he finds himself caught up in what seems at first a cruel prank: a series of bizarre emails and texts that purport to be from his comatose brother.

Moving between the research hospitals of Manhattan, the streets of a meticulously planned Florida city, the neighborhoods of Brooklyn, and the uncanny, immersive worlds of urban disaster simulation; threading through military listserv geek-speak, Hindu cosmology, outmoded self-help books and the latest neuroscientific breakthroughs, Luminarium is a brilliant examination of the way we live now, a novel as much about the role technology and spirituality play in shaping our reality as about the undying bond between brothers, and the redemptive possibilities of love.