THE PRANK is a novel about the tendency for any news story involving a cute child or a reprehensible parent to become a media feeding frenzy, about the incredible communicative power of the internet, about the speed at which a fabricated happening can cross the threshold into accepted truth. But it is also about us as consumers of narrative: about how the digital revolution has changed the way we process information. My hope is that as you are reading you will find yourself scanning, skipping, dismissing, and cherry-picking: pay attention to these moments. This is your brain doing something remarkable, something profoundly post-modern, something perhaps not altogether benign. - from the author's foreword