The not-so-distant future. Most illnesses have been eradicated, and human death is now caused primarily by virus outbreaks or terrorist attacks. As a coping mechanism, humanity develops technology

that creates digital copies of human consciousness.

Individuals can create digital backups of themselves, which are activated after death and can communicate with the living — but only with a limited number of family and friends. These copies are isolated from others and banned from interfering in the world of the living. To compensate for their inevitable loneliness, the government merges all the dead people’s personal contexts and memories, creating an internet of the dead: the Deadnet. Here, digital copies can interact and even form relationships.

The protagonist, a woman in her mid-forties, wakes up “resurrected” as a copy, only to learn she was killed in a terrorist attack. She connects with her family and friends, but her loving husband astonishingly refuses to communicate with her. Her family avoids the subject, and after a series of failed attempts, she is forced to give up. She meets A., one of the first Deadnet inhabitants, and they begin a relationship.

Deadnet residents continue their struggle against “bioprivilege,” fi ghting for a voice in the real

world. A revolution ensues: the dead invade the Internet of Things, taking over digital devices and appliances and wreaking havoc. The attempt is short-lived; the government unplugs the Deadnet, cutting it off from the real world. Yet their daring effort is not entirely in vain — the dead manage to steal millions of backup copies of the living. Among these stolen copies is an earlier copy of the protagonist’s husband. Because it was created before his wife’s death, he is shocked to find himself on the Deadnet and even more stunned to discover his wife involved with another man. To investigate her own death, the married couple hacks into the real world and uncovers the awful truth: the protagonist

did not die in a terrorist attack. She was brutally murdered by her husband, who is now in prison.

The murder investigation leads the protagonist to the headquarters of the Committee for the Insurrection of the Dead, who help her hack into the otherwise cut-off real world. She manages to reach it in various forms — as an airport departure board, a robotic dog, and even a clone of a certain Eastern European dictator. She does this for the sake of the Deadnet, but also secretly for her own

personal quest.

While her investigation proves fruitless, she uncovers a crucial piece of information: the government plans to shut down the Deadnet server completely. The Committee assigns her a mission to enable the portal for Deadnet self-download. In a final effort to solve her murder mystery, she forges a portal not only into the real world but also through time. She travels to the moment of her murder and witnesses the act in the body of her own husband.

Through his eyes, she observes her “real” self fighting him at a restaurant. As she rummages through his mind, she realizes he never intended to kill her. Yet she also knows that if she leaves now, her real

self will survive, and none of the events that followed — her resurrection, her relationship with A., her new friends — would ever have happened. Moreover, the Deadnet itself would cease to exist.

Her death proves to be the key to a new world, and she faces a choice.

This quantum detective thriller and metaphysical anti-utopia is a delight for inquisitive minds. Tatsiana

Zamirovskaya takes readers on a challenging journey into the philosophical cosmos of Nikolay Fyodorov and Boris Groys, embedding concepts from speculative realism in the vein of Ray Brassier

and Timothy Morton. In this witty page-turner, Zamirovskaya poses audacious existential questions:

Is memory a gateway to eternity? How might the resurrection of the dead inform our understanding of

free will? Is a digitalized consciousness truly alive? She also invites readers to dwell on pressing social

issues: life in isolation, dictatorships, institutionalized ghettos, and — above all — the ways in which we

revolt.