The Bug

The debut novel by the acclaimed American novelist and former computer programmer Ellen Ullman, The Bug is both a novel of ideas and a suspense story.

'Thrilling and intellectually fearless . . . If more contemporary novels delivered news this relevant and wise they'd have to stop declaring the death of the novel'

— The New York Times

In one of the computer-dictated pauses that now constantly intrude on our lives, Roberta Walton starts to think back twenty years, to her first job in computing, to the bug she found there and the man it destroyed. Ellen Ullman's acclaimed first novel compellingly, thrillingly explores the connections between us and our machines, and between programming, obsession and madness. As the bug - bug UI-01017, The Jester - teases, defies and threatens its creators.

Ellen Ullman's The Bug is published by Pushkin Press.

Ellen Ullman's Close to the Machine, a memoir of her time as a software engineer during the early years of the internet revolution, became a cult classic and established her as a writer of considerable talent; with her second book, The Bug, she became an acclaimed and vital novelist; By Blood is her third. All three are published in the UK by Pushkin Press. Her essays and opinion pieces have been widely published in venues such as Harper's, The New York Times, Salon, and Wired. She lives in San Francisco.



Ellen Ullman's Close to the Machine, a memoir of her time as a software engineer during the early years of the internet revolution, became a cult classic and established her as a writer of considerable talent; with her second book, The Bug, she became an acclaimed and vital novelist; By Blood is her third. She lives in San Francisco.