Description: The Employees by Olga Ravn, Martin Aitken Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, The Employees reshuffles a sci-fi voyage into a riotously original existential nightmare FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Now in paperback, The Employees chronicles the fate of the interstellar Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids. Olga Ravns prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity. Author Biography Olga Ravn (born 1986) is a Danish novelist and poet. In collaboration with the Danish publisher Gyldendal she edited a selection of Tove Ditlevsens writings that relaunched Ditlevsen readership worldwide. Her novel The Employees was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. SOPHIA HERSI SMITH and JENNIFER RUSSELL are translators living in Copenhagen. Together, they have translated fiction and poetry by Danish writers such as Tove Ditlevsen, Marianne Larsen, and Rakel Haslund-Gjerrild. MARTIN AITKEN has translated numerous novels from Danish and Norwegian, including works by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Peter HØeg, Ida Jessen, and Kim Leine. He won the PEN Translation Prize for his translation of Hanne Ørstaviks Love. Review "A deeply sensory book, suffused with aroma and alert to tactility... The Employees is not only a disconcertingly quotidian space opera; its also an audacious satire of corporate language and the late-capitalist workplace, and a winningly abstracted investigation into what it means to be human… This clever, endlessly thought-provoking novel catches something of our recursive search for the nature of consciousness; a question that answers itself, a voice in the darkness, an object moving through space." -- Justine Jordan - Guardian"An alarmingly brilliant work of art" -- Max Porter"Beautiful, sinister, gripping. A tantalizing puzzle you can never quite solve. All the reviews say that the novel is, ultimately, about what it means to be human. What makes it exceptional, however, is the way it explores the richness and strangeness of being non-human." -- Mark Haddon"What might result if Ursula K. Le Guin and Nell Zink had a baby." -- Tank Magazine"An achingly beautiful mosaic of fragile characters managing their longing, pain, and alienation. This gorgeous, evocative novel is well worth the effort." -- Publishers Weekly"In brief numbered statements delivered by the human and nonhuman crew of the Six Thousand Ship to a shadowy committee, Ravn seeds her narrative with direct and allegorical reflections on transhumanism, disappearing nature, and the ambiguities of being embodied... The novel is by turns queasily exact about what is seen—skin pitted like pomegranate, an objects furrows oozing some nameless balm—and willfully obscure. Ambiguity is everything: "I dont know if Im human anymore. Am I human? Does it say in your files what I am?"" -- Brian Dillon - 4columns"The Employees asks important questions about what makes up human consciousness, and also, critiques corporate language that can make its way into our lives sometimes without us knowing. Its very funny. Its very interesting. I definitely recommend checking this one out." -- Corinne Segal - WNYC"A book that strikes a rare balance between SF philosophy and workaday feeling all while whirling through space." -- Kirkus"Few stories today are as sublimely strange and their own thing as Olga Ravns The Employees. This disorienting, mind-bending expanse recalls as much the poetry of Aase Berg as the workplace fiction of Thomas Ligotti. Something marvelously sui generis for the jaded." -- Jeff VanderMeer"The most striking aspect of this weird, beautiful, and occasionally disgusting novel is not, as its subtitle implies, its portrayal of working life on the spaceship. What The Employees captures best is humanitys ambivalence about life itself, its sticky messes and unappealing functions, the goo that connects us to everything that crawls and mindlessly self-propagates, not to mention that obliterating payoff at the end of it all." -- Laura Miller - New York Review of Books Review Quote "What might result if Ursula K. Le Guin and Nell Zink had a baby." Details ISBN0811234827 Year 2023 ISBN-10 0811234827 ISBN-13 9780811234825 Format Paperback Language English Pages 144 Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States UK Release Date 2023-02-17 Author Martin Aitken Translator Martin Aitken Subtitle A workplace novel of the 22nd century AU Release Date 2023-02-17 NZ Release Date 2023-02-17 Publisher New Directions Publishing Corporation Alternative 9780811231350 DEWEY 839.8138 Audience General Publication Date 2023-02-17 US Release Date 2023-02-17 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:139706563;
Price: 33.49 AUD
Location: Melbourne
End Time: 2024-11-30T09:18:33.000Z
Shipping Cost: 0 AUD
Product Images
Item Specifics
Restocking fee: No
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
Returns Accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
Format: Paperback
Language: English
ISBN-13: 9780811234825
Author: Olga Ravn, Martin Aitken
Type: Does not apply
Book Title: The Employees
ISBN: 9780811234825