The Startup Wife
A Novel
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“A whip-smart, funny, and searing look at the wild world of startups.” —Good Morning America Book Club Buzz Pick
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR
In this “wise and wickedly funny novel about love, creativity, and the limitations of the tech-verse” (Vogue) newlyweds Asha and Cyrus find themselves running one of the most popular social media platforms in the world.
Meet Asha Ray. Brilliant coder and possessor of a Pi tattoo, Asha is poised to make a scientific breakthrough when she is reunited with her high school crush, Cyrus Jones.
Before she knows it, Asha has abandoned her lab, exchanged vows with Cyrus, and gone to work at an exclusive tech incubator called Utopia to develop an app called WAI—“We are Infinite.”
WAI creates a sensation, with millions of users logging on every day. Will Cyrus and Asha’s marriage survive the pressures of sudden fame, or will she become overshadowed by the man everyone is calling the new messiah?
This “scathing—and hilarious—take on startup culture, marriage and workaholism” (Politico) explores whether or not technology—with all its limits and possibilities—can disrupt modern love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Heavy lies the high-tech crown in Anam's spectacular fourth novel (after her Bengal trilogy). Asha Ray, 30, a brilliant computer coder whose PhD project at Harvard involves the "reverse engineering of the brain," reconnects with Cyrus Jones, a high school crush she hasn't seen in 13 years who has become an itinerant "humanist spirit guide," officiating weddings and baptisms for nonreligious people. She abandons her research and the two marry in an impulsive city hall wedding, then move into her parents' house on Long Island. Asha and Cyrus find work at Utopia, a tech company whose mission is to "save humanity from the apocalypse." There, Asha throws herself into creating an "Empathy Module" algorithm for a social networking app inspired by Cyrus's spiritual work. The app, a "virtual parish" called WAI (We Are Infinite) becomes a global sensation, and, after Cyrus gets the credit for it, his charismatic personality turns him into a "new messiah" and threatens their marriage. A startling ending framed by a deadly, Covid-like pandemic drives the plot close to a disastrous abyss as a trend of "death ritual groups" sparked by the app causes moral and ethical dilemmas. Anam provides a piercing perspective on marital and business institutions and gender bias and cultural clashes, and weaves in rich local color as Asha grows reacquainted with her childhood home and her parents' Muslim community. This is a powerful statement on the consequences of public achievement on private happiness.
