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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 TEOA 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...
About the author
Kikuko Tsumura was born in Osaka, Japan, where she still lives today. In her first job out of college, Tsumura experienced workplace harassment and quit after ten months to retrain and find another position, an experience that inspired her to write stories about young workers. She has won numerous Japanese literary awards including the Akutagawa Prize and the Noma Literary New Face Prize, and her first short story translated into English, 'The Water Tower and the Turtle', won a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology recognized Tsumura's work with a New Artist award in 2016. There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job is her first novel to be translated into English.
Polly Barton is a translator of Japanese literature and non-fiction, based in the UK. Stories she has translated have appeared in Words Without Borders, Granta and The White Review. Full-length translations include Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki and Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda. After being awarded the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, she is currently working on a non-fiction book entitled Fifty Sounds.
Summary
'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
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...
Foreword
Convenience Store Woman meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation in this strange, compelling, darkly funny tale of one woman's search for meaning in the modern workplace
Additional text
Completely different to anything I've read before ... there is an almost dreamlike feeling to the story
Report
Tsumura's portrait of the daily grind is spot-on, her observations wryly tender. Polly Barton's translation captures the deadpan absurdity and subtle surrealism in this inventive Japanese novel Madeleine Feeny Mail on Sunday
