Cloudthief - by Nathaniel Rich (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

One of the Los Angeles Times' 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, NPR's 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 a brilliant, paranoid, and tech-savvy con artist who has devised a way to live off the grid in the heart of Manhattan. Joined by desire and desperation, the two 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 dime-store 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 in Nathaniel Rich's Cloudthief, the heist is only the beginning.

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 Magazine

"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

"A gripping road trip heist story filled with edgy dialogue and thought-provoking social commentary on the working class's growing fury over high-tech's chokehold on modern life."
--Suzanne Van Atten, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"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

"Brisk and entertaining."
--The New Yorker

"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

"Cloudthief is, by my estimation, a detailed instruction manual on how to rob a data center as well as an explicit dare to do so--it meets our sociopolitical moment to audacious and satisfying ends. It's also a riveting exploration of the human capacity for both tenderness and manipulation, and the power relationships have to compel us to act. Tim and Virginia are fascinating and strange, their relationship compellingly irrational--a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, if Clyde were down so bad he was willing to risk it all. The intellectual provocation of Nathaniel Rich's climate fiction brilliantly gilds the story's true propulsion: that of a scarred but indefatigable human heart."
--Olivie Blake, New York Times-bestselling author of Girl Dinner

"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 twenty-first century."
--Barry Gifford, author of the Sailor and Lula series 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 twenty-first-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