The Luddite's Manifesto

This was a great listen. Follow Paul, a professor at odds with the modern world - its politics, its dependence on technology, its changing mores - and in response is hard at work on a philosophical essay which, he believes, will help steer society back towards an older, better time that may well exist only in his own mind.
Though highly satirical this is no exaggerated exercise in style, but a realistic and convincing depiction of a man rapidly losing himself in his convictions; convictions which grow increasingly similar to those of the more right-wing commentators he opposes. This is the novel's greatest strength: though you may grow exasperated with Paul and his increasingly extreme behaviours, you at all times understand how he has come to be this way. The social, financial, and political pressures of today's world are rendered so finely, in precise, flowing prose, with not a word wasted or out of place, that you cannot help but see all issues from multiple perspectives, and sympathise with Paul on his journey to the wastelands of online message-boards and extreme self-justifying action.
A humorous and perfectly formed trip through modern society and its difficulties, ultimately it is the sense of tragedy that lingers longest: the damage we can do to those around us when we become inflexible, resistant to change, stuck in the dream of a past that barely existed, one we could never return to even it did.

The reader was excellent too: well-paced and expressive, he was the perfect choice for the material.

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