Cloudthief: A Novel
Jul 2026 · Sold by MCD
Ebook
304
Pages
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About this ebook
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.
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.
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, ...
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About the author
Nathaniel Rich is the author of four novels and two works of nonfiction that have won numerous prizes and been adapted for film. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and writes regularly for Harper’s Magazine and The New York Review of Books. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, Rich lives in New Orleans and teaches in the Environmental Studies program at Tulane University.
Nathaniel Rich is the author of four novels and two works of nonfiction that have won numerous prizes and been adapted for film. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and writes regularly for Harper’s Magazine and The New York Review of Books. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, Rich ...
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