Conville & Walsh

Conville & Walsh are delighted to announce that Misha Glenny has been nominated on the longlist for this year’s Orwell Prize for his non-fiction book Dark Market.

The benefits of living in a digital, globalised society are enormous; so too are the dangers. The world has become a law enforcer’s nightmare and every criminal’s dream. We bank online, shop online, date, learn, work and live online. But have the institutions that keep us safe on the streets learned to protect us in the burgeoning digital world? Have we become complacent about our personal security – sharing our thoughts, beliefs and the details of our daily lives with anyone who cares to relieve us of them?

In this fascinating and compelling book, Misha Glenny, author of the international bestseller McMafia, explores the three fundamental threats facing us in the 21st century: cyber crime, cyber warfare and cyber industrial espionage. Governments and the private sector are losing billions of dollars each year, fighting an ever-morphing, often invisible, often super-smart new breed of criminal: the hacker. Glenny has travelled and trawled the world. And by exploring the rise and fall of the criminal website, DarkMarket, he has uncovered the most vivid, alarming and illuminating stories. Whether JiLsi or Matrix, Iceman, Master Splynter or Lord Cyric; whether Detective Sergeant Chris Dawson in Scunthorpe or Agent Keith Mularski in Pittsburgh, Glenny has tracked down and interviewed all the players – the criminals, the geeks, the police, the security experts and the victims – and he places everyone and everything in a rich brew of politics, economics and history.

The Orwell Prize is Britain’s most prestigious prize for political writing. Every year, prizes are awarded for books, journalism and blogs which come closest to George Orwell’s ambition ‘to make political writing into an art’. The shortlist - six in each category - will be announced in a a few weeks’ time, and winners are announced at a public awards ceremony a few weeks later, where the judges may also opt to award a special prize at their discretion.

You can buy a copy of the book online, or offline.