The Secret Life: Three True Stories of the Digital Age - Hardcover

A Publishers Weekly Best Books 2017

"[O'Hagan] explores 'the wild west of the Internet' with incisive vigor in The Secret Life . . . Dizzying and gripping . . . The Secret Life cunningly alights on ways that cyber-deceptions and flawed personalities can collide and combust." ―Michael Upchurch, The Chicago Tribune

"A riveting book . . . Deeply moving . . . Poignant . . . Unexpectedly heartbreaking . . . To judge from Mr. O’Hagan’s arresting trio of portraits, society’s online Twilight Zone inspires both despair and humanity―often at the cost of truth and trust." ―Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal

"Fascinating . . . O'Hagan asks probing questions about the meaning and construct of identity in the digital age. Smart and engaging, The Secret Life will change the way you see life on the internet." ―Sadie Trombetta, Bustle

"Three fascinating strange-but-true tales of the Internet age. The first―O'Hagan's hilariously frank account of his short-lived career as Julian Assange's ghostwriter―is worth the price of admission." ―Ash Carter, Esquire

"O'Hagan, perhaps best known as a fiction writer, transports a novelist's eye for narrative to his journalistic assignments . . . Aside from his subjects' binary backdrops, their secret lives reek as much of Dostoyevsky or Freud as of cyberspace . . . O'Hagan's stories [are] gripping reads . . . a wormy compost of spooks, doubles, neurotic agendas, and artfulness." ―Laura Kipnis, Bookforum

"Splendid . . . O'Hagan's grasp of storytelling is prodigious, and the ending of his essay on Pinn is a particularly inspired, even moving, piece of writing. Taken as a whole, this is an unmissable collection of up-to-the-moment insights about life in our digital era." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Andrew O'Hagan is one of my favorite writers . . . [These essays] are a joy to read and perhaps O'Hagan described them best, calling them 'nonfiction thrillers.'" ―Library Journal

"Three intriguing pieces of journalism about the new threats of a digital age . . . [O'Hagan is] razor-sharp." ―Kirkus Reviews

"O'Hagan is an immensely engaging writer: wry and witty, and insightful . . . despite their technological background, these are ultimately human stories and O'Hagan tells them superbly." ―Ian Critchley, Sunday Times

"Altogether, The Secret Life is nothing less than an affirmation that using words well still matters, even now." ―David Sexton, Evening Standard

"It is a tribute to O'Hagan's quiet and effective betrayal of Assange that the reader's ambivalence towards the Wikileaker does not prevent the reader's gradual antipathy." ―David Aaronovitch, The Times

"O'Hagan [is] a vivid and meticulous writer . . . at the core of this excellent collection we glimpse the unbridgeable difference between the real and the invented." ―Andrew Anthony, Observer

"O'Hagan's prose is always a delight. The cadence of his sentences, the way in which he balances extension and brevity, the unspooling and the reeling in, is a masterclass in the art of prose. This is not just a good book, but a necessary one." ―Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

"The theme is identity in the digital age and [O'Hagan's] three subjects are exquisitely fit for purpose . . . Thrilling." ―Esquire (UK)