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The goal is simple in cases like this: nobody can ever know. "You drill down to what matters the most to a person and you destroy it." DUMP NO WASTE  ·  FLOWS TO SEA

DESERT ROAD
OPEN

A Novel by Jane Copland

"You drill down to what matters the most to a person and you destroy it."

34 Chapters. 34 Interactive Experiences. Explore the world below

The Novel

Andrew McBride fled Auckland at twenty-three with one cap for New Zealand and a career in ruins. The victim of a harassment campaign orchestrated by his country's most powerful businessman, Andrew rebuilds his life in London. Thirteen years later, the campaign finds him again: in the forums, threads and inboxes where reputations are dismantled by people who never sign their names.

Set between Auckland and London across two timelines, Desert Road Open is a novel about the infrastructure of modern destruction, kinship under extreme pressure, and the distance between where you're from, and who you become.

"It feels absolutely fresh and timely! Absolutely gripping from the start and it really brought a world — or actually several worlds — I did not know much about to life."

Ellery Lloyd, New York Times‑bestselling author of The Club, a Reese's Book Club pick

Explore the 34 chapter experiences

Explore the World

The novel is about lives performed, surveilled and destroyed online — and its companion experiences live where the damage does. First-person simulations. 3D environments. A playable gossip forum. Each chapter is its own experience.

Short on time? Start with Snitch City, Walk Me Home and The People Versus Hayden Berish.

1Fair Catch 2Recommended Dose 3If There Are None, Travel Alone 4Repatriation 5The Right Guy 6Dissolution 7Betrayal Begins in the Boardroom 8Zero Sum Football 9Exfiltration 10Least Favourite Son 11The People Versus Hayden Berish 12Home Again 13Citizenship and Barbarians 14The Average of Your Closest FriendsRetro Game 15Watch Me CompanionSnitch CityThe novel's anonymous forum, fully playable. An entire chapter of the book unfolds inside it.Interactive Forum 16To All Who Play and All Who Will 17Somebody Else's Son 18Birthright 19Les Lumières du Vendredi Soir 20No More Than Two 21Twenty-One 22A Team Sport 23The Front Page of the Internet 24Benjamin and the Polymath 25Pant Suit Gutter Press 26Midnight Crossing 27Desert Road Open3D Environment 28Found Family 29Walk Me HomeFirst-Person Simulation 30To Penalties 31Patrons and Saints 32Blood Sub 33Against the Tasman Tide 34Time On
Jane Copland

Jane Copland

I am a New Zealand/British author based in Oxford, England. In my teens and early twenties I held the New Zealand women's 200m breaststroke record and swam for Washington State University in the NCAA.

I am represented by Sara Langham of David Higham Associates.

My short fiction has been recognised by the Brick Lane Bookshop Prize, Witness Magazine, Hayden's Ferry Review and other publications. Before fiction, I spent thirteen years in digital marketing — these chapter experiences are what happens when that career meets this novel, and a different way into Andrew McBride's world.

More about me →