_______________'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 shes not searching for the easiest job at all, but something altogether more meaningful... _______________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 Bartons translation skilfully captures the protagonists dejected, anxious voice and her deadpan humour ... imaginative and unusual' - Times Literary SupplementSee more
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Product Details
Weight: 290g
Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
Publication Date: 14 Oct 2021
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publication City/Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781526622259
About Kikuko Tsumura
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. Theres 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.