[Book Review] Harassment Architecture

A relatably repugnant piece of schizophrenic fiction

I’ve never felt the urge to lash out in anger because of a book before.

Harassment Architecture by Mike Ma is not a novel in any traditional sense. There’s no clear plot, no structured philosophy. Just unfiltered thought. It’s a book that creates a disjointed, frustrated psyche; that of those who feel suffocated by the hypersensitive, post-industrial world of the early 21st century. And perhaps that’s the point: coherence is a luxury in a generation raised on fractured attention spans and existential dread.

I’ve described it to others as “a psychotic break in literary” and “the Kaczynskian reality we were warned about.” Ma is undeniably well-read, and he has clearly lived in the soulless, urban sprawl that defines modern existence. The fragments of narrative he offers hint at places like New York, but this book is less about setting and more about feeling.

For me, the experience of reading Harassment Architecture was less intellectual and more visceral. It didn’t just make me think—it made me feel. Anger. Aggression. Despair. How many books have the power to summon that kind of raw emotion? Few. This one does. It functions almost like a memetic drug, especially for those of us who recognize something of ourselves in its pages. If you choose to read it, I suggest pairing it with Industrial Society and Its Future—where Kaczynski presents the thesis, Ma seems to offer the emotional closing statement.

This book will either repulse you within the first chapter or drag you into an ideological free-fall. I can’t say either outcome is “healthy.” But I can say it’s worth confronting. Because at its core, Harassment Architecture is the experience of those who once glimpsed freedom—only to have it torn away.