TonyInterruptor by Nicola Barker

LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE

'Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?'

You couldn't really call the man soon to be christened TonyInterruptor a heckler, but he seems to feel an unquenchable urge to disrupt and interrupt live cultural events. Who is he? What does he want? Why does he indulge in behaviour that violates the social contract?

After just such a public interruption goes viral, a small group of characters determine to find out the answers to these question, and end up learning more than they might possibly like about music, culture, relationships, Art, integrity, each other and their own endlessly disrupted and disruptable selves.

As profound as it is exuberant, TonyInterruptor traces the aftermath of a single event as it reverberates through the online world and its characters' lives, upending everything in its wake and posing fundamental questions about authenticity, the internet, love and, yes, truth.