The Ten Percent Thief

By: Lavanya Lakshminarayan

Narrated by: Deepa Samuel, Shawn K. Jain

Nothing has happened. Not yet, anyway. This is how all things begin.

Welcome to Apex City, formerly Bangalore, where everything is decided by the mathematically perfect Bell Curve.

With the right image, values, and opinions, you can ascend to the glittering heights of the Twenty Percent—the Virtual elite—and have the world at your feet. Otherwise you risk falling to the precarious Ten Percent, and deportation to the ranks of the Analogs, with no access to electricity, running water, or even humanity.

The system has no flaws. Until the elusive "Ten Percent Thief" steals a single jacaranda seed from the Virtual city and plants a revolution in the barren soil of the Analog world.

Previously published in South Asia only as Analog/Virtual, The Ten Percent Thief is a striking debut by a ferocious new talent.

©2020, 2023 Lavanya Lakshminarayan (P)2024 Tantor

Great stories, not great reader

Why did the reader and director/producers think this needed to be read in a way that is cringingly melodramatic? I could not listen to it because the reader thought her job was to sound as near hysterics as possible. As a long-time listener to audiobooks, that is not what we want. I made it to about the third story and will never listen again. Too bad because it’s a good book.