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A provocative black comedy of mystery, hijinks, and absurdist despair set at the only theme park devoted to death, dying, and the afterlifeZita Chang's job-marketing death for the twenty-first century-is just like everyone else's entry-level position in a corporate machine. While she's grinding away, she's determined not to let her grief over the death of her father interfere with her work. But being a Nine Circles employee comes with perks: she can ask the Afterlife team to replace Siri with her dead dad's voice so that he can give her the advice she never wanted when he was alive.
Just when Zita feels the drudgery can't get any worse, the Nine Circles calls an emergency meeting nine weeks before the park's grand opening to drop a shocking bomb: not only has their executive director died under mysterious circumstances, but Zita and her coworkers are charged with programming his reanimated body to keep the launch on schedule. Can Zita pull this off? Why have a few other colleagues recently dropped dead too? And couldn't this meeting have been an email?
About the author
DORETTA LAU started watching horror movies at age nine and sketch comedy at eleven, which was probably why she ended up completing an MFA in Writing at Columbia University. She spent her days in New York working in children's publishing and her nights watching musicians work out their inner demons. As a journalist in Hong Kong, she wrote about arts and culture for
Artforum,
Wall Street Journal Asia, and
South China Morning Post.
The Atlantic named her short story collection,
How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?, as a best book of 2014. The title story was shortlisted for the 2013 Writers' Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. She is currently developing projects for film and television.
We Are Underlings is her first novel. Visit dorettalau.com.
