Cloudthief - by Nathaniel Rich (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

One of the Los Angeles Times's 12 Best Books of Summer
A Chicago Tribune "Coolest Book of Summer"

"A blast . . . Filled with sharp descriptions and terrific dialogue, Cloudthief stuck with me. I've read no other novel that captures so neatly what it means to be a data-center nation." --John Powers, Fresh Air

Why settle for nothing, when you can steal everything?

Forget banks, casinos, museums--society's most valuable treasure sits in the giant, anonymous data centers that power modern life. There, in endless rows of hard drives, lies the sum of our civilization's knowledge, all of the world's personal and private truths, uploaded and saved. They wait unseen, unexploited, and, most critically, unguarded.

Tim is a climate journalist disillusioned with chronicling the end of the world. Virginia is an evasive, paranoid, and technologically savvy con artist who has found an ingenious way to live off the grid in the heart of Manhattan. Joined by desire and desperation, they hatch a plan to steal secrets. But they have secrets of their own--secrets they can't tell each other, secrets that could destroy them both...

With their last few dollars and some dimestore wigs they set out for the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the unlikely site of the world's largest repository of knowledge--a data center the size of a small city--to attempt a brazen heist that, whether they fail or succeed, will change their lives forever.

But the heist is only the beginning.

From the award-winning author Nathaniel Rich, Cloudthief is a heist novel for a new era, in which the most valuable things in life are virtual, privacy is a sick joke, and security is relative. After all is lost, what remains?

Review Quotes

"A boisterous new novel that's equal parts heist thriller and cry in the digital wilderness . . . [Cloudthief serves] up the juicy stuff that we all love in a heist story . . . A blast . . . Filled with sharp descriptions and terrific dialogue, Cloudthief stuck with me. I've read no other novel that captures so neatly what it means to be a data-center nation." --John Powers, Fresh Air

"[A] rambunctious, thoroughly entertaining heist novel . . . Rich has an ear for dialogue, for the sound of smart people doing stupid shit." --Dan Piepenbring, Harper's

"Is any younger writer so versatile, talented and original as Nathaniel Rich? . . . Cloudthief is propulsive, precise and alive, the rare book that could instantly be made into a film though rich in knowledge, ideas and questions--and that gives me hope for literature." --Pico Iyer (via X)

"A rollicking good time . . . [A] spry, funny caper." --Colin Dwyer, NPR

"I was all in on page 5, when I read this tossed-off line of description: On the bus we passed a file of identical A-frame houses that formed a long scream: AAAAAAAAAAAAA. A page-turner built from prose like that, mamma mia." --Molly Young (via Substack)

"Cloudthief is a novel scheming in the modern age . . . What's so striking about Cloudthief [. . .] is how little Rich leans on his considerable skill as a thriller writer . . . Brilliant and harrowing . . . The story soars through questions about who we are, what can be known about us, and what, in the end, we can know about each other." --Ron Charles (via Substack)

"A smart and entertaining heist story . . . Whether in love or theft, information is the valuable currency in this novel. And it is something, we are reminded, that can be smuggled away in a backpack." --Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Structured initially as a heist and then progressing into something more complex, Rich cleverly weaves the pressing issues of our time into a gripping, all-encompassing narrative." --Bloomberg

"A heady and diabolical mix of atmospheric road trip, mad caper, and risky love story spiked with shrewd insights . . . Rich has ingeniously crafted a seductive bull's-eye thriller of psychological exactitude and scathing societal critique." --Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

"[A] meticulously plotted, philosophically compelling caper . . . Engrossing . . . Genuine intellectual heft and fast-paced, nimbly plotted action can coexist, after all. Top-notch."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Rich's heist novel is doing what the best genre fiction does: using genre mechanics--suspense, the caper, the twist--to make a structural argument about what the economy has become." --Tech Times

"A definite page-turner, this novel asks us to take a look at ourselves and the world we've created, where privacy is gone and nothing is secure." --Nautilus

"Equal parts modern relationship drama, philosophical inquiry and comic heist thriller, it's thought-provoking realism at the intersection of technology and malaise--a caper for Cory Doctorow devotees." --Zoomer

"Nathaniel Rich has constructed a category of fiction inescapably classifiable as noir reportage. Cloudthief is a must-read novel for anyone disturbed about the dubious direction of the 21st century."
--Barry Gifford, author of Sailor & Lula and The Exception

"Cloudthief is a literary tour de force that takes us deep inside the immensely powerful systems that have become the secret architecture of our lives. It is at once a gripping narrative of crime and consequence, and a devastating critique of our surveillance-obsessed world. This novel confirms Nathaniel Rich as one of our most essential and prophetic voices."
--Amitav Ghosh, author of Ghost-Eye

"Cloudthief is a sneaky, clever 21st century heist novel that's a propulsive page turner, but also contains multitudes in the ways it interrogates our modern condition. Extremely satisfying and very funny."
--Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach series

About the Author

Nathaniel Rich is the author of Cloudthief (2026) and three previous novels, all New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice selections: King Zeno (2018); Odds Against Tomorrow (2013); and The Mayor's Tongue (2008). His short fiction has won the Emily Clark Balch Prize and been a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award for Fiction. He has also written two works of nonfiction: Second Nature (2021), which includes the story that serves as the basis for the film Dark Waters; and Losing Earth (2019), a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Losing Earth is being adapted into a film directed by Tom McCarthy.
Rich is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a frequent contributor to The Atlantic, Harper's, and The New York Review of Books. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, he teaches at Tulane University and lives in New Orleans.