Alan Clay has a hologram for the king – in this case the Saudi sovereign, Abdullah. The king is the man ultimately in control of the embryonic King Abdullah Economic City, the real-life development an hour’s drive north of Jeddah that forms the backdrop to Dave Eggers’s brilliant new novel about globalisation and its discontents.

At the time of Alan’s visit, the KAEC is just a cluster of buildings surrounded by wasteland; but if all goes to plan, it will become a high-tech metropolis to rival Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Alan’s IBM-like employer Reliant wants to provide the IT for this city of the future,