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'Surreal and unsettling' - Observer Cultural Highlight
'Wise, comical and exceptionally relatable' - Zeba Talkhani
'Quietly hilarious and deeply attuned to the uncanny rhythms and deadpan absurdity of the daily grind' - Sharlene Teo
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A woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that requires no reading, no writing – and ideally, very little thinking.
She is sent to an office building where she is tasked with watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods. But observing someone for hours on end isn't so easy. How will she stay awake? When can she take delivery of her favourite brand of tea? And, perhaps more importantly – how did she find herself in this situation in the first place?
As she moves from job to job, writing bus adverts for shops that mysteriously disappear, and composing advice for rice cracker wrappers that generate thousands of devoted followers, it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all, but something altogether more meaningful...
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'An irreverent but thoughtful voice, with light echoes of Haruki Murakami ... the book is uncannily timely ... a novel as smart as is quietly funny' - Financial Times
'Polly Barton's translation skilfully captures the protagonist's dejected, anxious voice and her deadpan humour ... imaginative and unusual' - Times Literary Supplement
Published | Oct 14 2021 |
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Format | Ebook (PDF) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 416 |
ISBN | 9781526646392 |
Imprint | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Tsumura's 21st-century response to Herman Melville's 'Bartleby, the Scrivener.' [Barton's translation] encourages us to imagine the voice of Tsumura's narrator/avatar as both cheeky and self-deprecating, the perfect balance to wage a stealth feminist revolution.
NPR
A revelation that plays out through Tsumura's sharp prose and biting observations on late capitalism.
Time, "Best New Books"
A wry commentary on the value of work.
New York Magazine
The unsettling genius of Tsumura's narrator is that despite her string of tedious jobs, she comes closest to describing what a good life may actually look like: spending time searching for chestnuts and breadfruit in the forest, taking long walks around the city, gently drawing out souls who have squirreled themselves away from the world, finding the strange in the everyday.
The Atlantic
Tsumura is adept at capturing tiny reactions, such as the insecurity triggered by an offhand remark, and building them into a picture of the emotional labor of the modern workplace.
The New Yorker
Surreal and frequently hilarious.
Boston Globe
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