MEET U. - CORPORATE ANTHROPOLOGIST secreted in the basement of a large consultancy. U. spends his time toiling away at a great, epoch-defining public project which no one, least of all its own creators, understands. Besieged by data, confronted at every turn by the fact of his own redundancy, U. grows obsessed with the images - oil-spills, roller-bladers heading nowhere over streets that revolutionaries once tore up, zombies on parade - which the world and all its veil-like screens bombard him with on a daily basis. Is there a plot at work behind the veil? Is it buffering a portal to the technological divine? Who killed the parachutist in the news? And what's this got to do with South Pacific Cargo Cults? U.'s disconnected notes from underground in fact amount to an impassioned, integrated vision - of disintegration. Satin Island is a book that captures our out-of-joint times like no other.