Neal Stephenson · 1999 · global

Neal Stephenson's 1999 epic braids a Second World War of codebreakers and Marines with a 1990s of hackers, undersea cable and digital cash. Across Pearl Harbor, Bletchley Park, the wartime Philippines and a fictional South-East Asian sultanate, two generations of Waterhouses and Shaftoes chase ciphers, buried Japanese gold and the dream of an information haven beyond any government's reach. Sprawling, funny and dense with cryptography. This single line compresses a deliberately tangled, globe-spanning web.

1. 1
   Pearl Harbor

   Lawrence Waterhouse, mathematical prodigy, survives the attack on Pearl Harbor and is swept into the secret war of codes and ciphers.

2. 2
   Bletchley Park

   At Bletchley Park, among Turing and the cryptographers, he helps break the enemy's signals, and must invent fictions to hide what the Allies can read.

3. 3
   Manila

   From the war in the Pacific to the gold General Yamashita is said to have buried in the Philippines, a thread the next generation will pick up.

4. 4
   Kinakuta

   Fifty years on, Lawrence's grandson Randy lays undersea cable and builds a data haven in the island Sultanate of Kinakuta, hunting the same lost gold and a freedom of his own.