Fake Accounts
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE
A wry, provocative and very funny debut novel about identity, authenticity and the self in the age of the internet
‘I loved it’ Zadie Smith
‘Brilliant, very funny’ Guardian
‘Prepare to feel very seen’ I-D
On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, a young woman snoops through her boyfriend’s phone and makes a startling discovery: he’s an anonymous Internet conspiracy theorist, and a popular one at that. Already fluent in Internet fakery, irony, and outrage, she’s not exactly shocked by the revelation. But this is only the first in a series of bizarre twists that expose a world whose truths are shaped by online lies.
Suddenly left with no reason to stay in New York – or be anywhere in particular – she flees to Berlin, and embarks on her own cycles of manipulation in the deceptive spaces of her daily life, from dating apps to expat social events, open-plan offices to bureaucratic waiting rooms.
Narrated in a voice as seductive as it is subtly subversive, Fake Accounts is a wry, provocative and very funny debut novel about identity and authenticity in the age of the internet.
”'This novel made me want to retire from contemporary reality. I loved it” - Zadie Smith
”'Compulsively readable” - Irish Times
”'A sharply observed and wryly funny satire on the banal sociopathy of online life” - Sunday Times
”A furiously vivid account of living online and an exploration of the fake and real versions of ourselves we slip between.” - ESQUIRE
”'Terrific…provides much food for thought .” - Birmingham Mail
”'Thoughtful, inquiring and independent-minded” - James Mariott, The Times
Fake Accounts questions who we are in real life and who we pretend to be online… Prepare to feel very seen.’i-D -
‘A probing examination of identity and authenticity in the online age, and the lies we like to tell ourselves’ANOTHER -
”'Social media has lurked in the background of contemporary literary fiction … but here it feels finally, fully and thoroughly explored, with style and originality. I felt sharpened by it, grateful for its provocations …” - New York Times
'A searingly funny, smart, revealing novel. Oyler's fiction is as insightful and probing as her criticism' Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them A Good Time -
‘[A] unique, ferociously modern voice. This incisive, funny work brilliantly captures the claustrophobia of lives led online and personally tested in the real world’ Publishers Weekly -
”'Fake Accounts percolates the big moral questions of our age - fraudulence, identity as performance, surveillance capitalism, political instability, personal freedom - through a narrative arc driven ingeniously by low-level dopamine hits. At the same time, it is very, very funny. Oyler is the kind of dangerous contemporary writer we need more of” - Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy and winner of the Sunday Times Short Story Award 2020