A blazingly smart, mind-bending dive into the internet with an extraordinary writer: a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the way we live today

We all live online now, but what does that mean in IRL? How do strange subcultures on reddit affect our local shopping centres, what do night gyms owe to Twitter, and where can we really go to get some decent sleep? Our every move online is watched, but can we see ourselves? In these wide-ranging, witty essays, Roisin Kiberd offers immersive insight into the strange worlds, habits and people who have grown up with the internet, and shows the way our world is changing to fit the online fever-dream. Unsettling, clear-sighted and perversely fun, she traces the lines between Netflix and nap hotels, vaporwave music and camgirls, self-optimisation and insomnia, dating apps and a grand unified theory of Monster Energy Drinks. As well as holding up the zeitgeist for scrutiny, she turns an equally frank eye on her own life online, and asks what we have gained, what we have lost, and what we have given willingly away in exchange for this connected world.

"Wildly impressive, interesting and entertaining" - The Irish Times

"A blistering collection ... marvellous ... profoundly, touchingly human." - Irish Daily Mail

"Blazingly smart" - Business Post

"Roisin Kiberd is a Dante of the internet, leading us through the infernal circles of our online damnation. The Disconnect is a brilliant debut collection - unsettling, illuminating, and perversely fun - by a writer of extraordinary style and intellectual range." - To Be A Machine

"Excellent: full of sharp analysis of life online, insomnia, dating apps and with a grand unified theory of Monster Energy drinks ... I felt both seen and like I could see more after reading this collection." - The Outrun

"As deep as it is wide-ranging, The Disconnect is a smart, timely, and beautifully intimate investigation into how the internet is turning us all inside-out." - Minor Monuments

"One of our brightest young writers." - Irish Times

"It's sharp, sad and funny ... If you, like me, have ever had to cut yourself off from an endless scroll and then felt the existential weight of being at once plugged into and removed from the rest of the world, then this book is for you." - Refinery 29

"A rare and wonderful attempt to acknowledge that, for many of us now, the distinction between "real-life" and the more nebulous realities that the internet provides us with have, in a very real sense, broken down." - Dublin Review of Books

"Setting the rise of technology and the companies that harness it against her own upbringing, personal struggles, the alienation of working freelance in post-austerity Ireland, Kiberd wades through the depths of the internet's effects on her personally, the places it's driven her to, and what she's taken away from it. A wake-up call, cause for self-examination, and a valuable piece of cultural anthropology." - Irish Examiner

"Superb" - Irish Examiner

"Kiberd is an enlightening and laser-sharp conversationalist, always keen to pursue a tangent if she sees one running off into the distance. Her book is equal parts absorbing and disconcerting, while her weaving of opinions, in-depth research and confessional soul-searching is indicative of a writer unafraid to poke her nose into areas usually left covered ... Sharp-witted, self-aware, extremely confessional" - Irish Independent

"Kiberd has a knack for describing with laser precision the shape and mood of an event, experience or emotion and a real skill for applied analysis." - The Irish Times

"Illuminating and insightful ... Fresh and unique" - RTE Guide

"Kiberd's writing is funny and frank, punchy and poetic, emotional and earnest. She writes with bravery and honesty about her struggles with depression, bulimia and anxiety" - Irish Independent

"Made me cry, laugh and feel less alone." - White Review