Viral

'Clever and compelling' Luke Jennings

'Viral is a vicious delight' Sam Byers

'Nobody else could capture the tragedy, transience and absurdity of modern life quite like this' Andrew McMillan

Meet Ned and Alice: internet entrepreneurs with a delightfully demagnetised moral compass.

In Berlin, their combined talents have brought social media start-up, The Thing Factory, to the verge of lucrative success.

But Ned - a businessman with a history of shady dealings - is unhappy at his increasing lack of control in the company.

When he launches a new app designed to 'Uberize' the escort industry, he finds himself treading in murky waters, having disturbed the fabric of Berlin's underbelly. As his anxieties become harder to ignore, Alice's ambitions are meanwhile tempting her to jettison her own principles for a turn at the wheel...

Both a satire on the social media age and a fast-paced suspense novel, Viral is a nimble commentary on power and control, the lengths people will go to acquire both, and what is at stake when personality and sex are tradable commodities.

“Nobody else could capture the tragedy, transience and absurdity of modern life quite like this - we need a new word: Sperlingarian, for novels this readable, this witty, this devastatingly insightful into the contemporary condition.Sly, subversive.Outrageous.Slightly too real.Clever and compelling, Sperling tightens the ratchet with a sure hand.”

An irresistible, razor-sharp and hilarious takedown of our generation's masters of the universe. Olivia Sudjic
A fiercely smart and funny portrayal of tech arrogance, unhinged entrepreneurship, and the vacuous amorality of disruptive startup culture. Viral is a vicious delight. -- Sam Byers
I loved Matthew Sperling's sly, subversive novel, a wickedly funny tale of how to come out on top in a fake news world. -- Olivia Laing, on ASTROTURF
Outrageous, sexy and funny. Sperling writes with the caustic economy of Waugh or Spark, but his characters have more heart, including the sock-puppets. The plot is so taut I'm still re-reading it trying to work out exactly how he brings the tension of a heist movie to 30-something bedsit London, all the while deliciously subverting our expectations. A joy to read -- Luke Kennard, on ASTROTURF
Themes of warped masculinity, identity, survival and the pursuit of perfection are all vividly rendered . . . a brawn cocktail that nails the zeitgeist. Irish Times on ASTROTURF
Simultaneously funny and dead accurate Sunday Telegraph
A pacey, dark dive into the morality of tech. It plays artfully on the subtle tropes of social media gurus and Silicon Valley bros without being obvious. Rather than being a parallel to Twitter discourse, it's a cathartic answer to it New Statesman
The deft assurance of Sperling's writing... an engaging takedown of the social media startup scene and the moral ambivalence of its characters Lunate

Matthew Sperling was born in Kent in 1982. He lives in London and is a lecturer in English Literature at UCL. His writing has been published in the Guardian, the New Statesman, 1983, Prospect, 3:AM, The Junket, and Best Britsish Short Stories 2015. His debut novel, Astroturf, was longlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2019.

'Clever and compelling' Luke Jennings 'Viral is a vicious delight' Sam Byers 'Nobody else could capture the tragedy, transience and absurdity of modern life quite like this' Andrew McMillan Meet Ned and Alice: internet entrepreneurs with a delightfully demagnetised moral compass. In Berlin, their combined talents have brought social media start-up, The Thing Factory, to the verge of lucrative success.But Ned - a businessman with a history of shady dealings - is unhappy at his increasing lack of control in the company. When he launches a new app designed to 'Uberize' the escort industry, he finds himself treading in murky waters, having disturbed the fabric of Berlin's underbelly. As his anxieties become harder to ignore, Alice's ambitions are meanwhile tempting her to jettison her own principles for a turn at the wheel... Both a satire on the social media age and a fast-paced suspense novel, Viral is a nimble commentary on power and control, the lengths people will go to acquire both, and what is at stake when personality and sex are tradable commodities.

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