British writer Nikesh Shukla’s second novel, Meatspace, opens with an arresting line. “The first and last thing I do every day is see what strangers are saying about me,” says Kitab Balasubramanyam, the novel’s protagonist.

Kitab feels as though his life has reached an impasse: he’s just been fired from his job for writing his novel on company time and his long-term girlfriend has just dumped him. He spends his days mucking around on Facebook and Twitter and burning through his inheritance and, if it wasn’t for his brother Aziz, he “wouldn’t talk to anyone apart from online”.

That’s until he receives a friend request from his namesake (another Kitab who looks just like him), which sets off a meta-fictive tale about how cyberspace often collides with the real world — meatspace.

“I look at the account of this other Kitab. I’ve known about his existence for a while now. Around six months ago, his Facebook profile had started showing up in my self-Googling. I was surprised at first. Another Kitab with my obscure surname. Another one. Another me,” says Kitab.

At its core, the novel asks a simple question: Who are we when we log off the internet?

Earlier this year, I tried my damndest to delete myself off the internet. Like Kitab, I’d felt like my life had reached its own self-pitying cul-de-sac. I was working six times a week, had just become a father and had watched the handful of friends I had in Cape Town move to Johannesburg.

I was always broke. And while everyone on my Instagram and Twitter feeds seemed to be buying cars, getting married, and moving overseas, mine seemed like a small, desperate world of the next credit card or rental payment.

Read the rest of the article on Mail and Guardian