Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty

The nonfiction debut from the author of the international bestseller "Sacred Games" about the surprising overlap between writing and computer coding

Vikram Chandra has been a computer programmer for almost as long as he has been a novelist. In this extraordinary new book, his first work of nonfiction, he searches for the connections between the worlds of art and technology. Coders are obsessed with elegance and style, just as writers are, but do the words mean the same thing to both? Can we ascribe beauty to the craft of writing code?
Exploring such varied topics as logic gates and literary modernism, the machismo of tech geeks, the omnipresence of an "Indian Mafia" in Silicon Valley, and the writings of the eleventh-century Kashmiri thinker Abhinavagupta, "Geek Sublime" is both an idiosyncratic history of coding and a fascinating meditation on the writer's art. Part literary essay, part technology story, and part memoir, it is an engrossing, original, and heady book of sweeping ideas.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 09/02/2014
ISBN: 9781555976859
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.73lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.70d
Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Finalist

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 05/26/2014
Kirkus Reviews 06/15/2014
New York Times Book Review 08/24/2014 pg. 17
Booklist 09/01/2014 pg. 28
People Weekly 08/31/2014 pg. 22
New Yorker (The) 10/13/2014 pg. 116
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/07/2014 pg. 28