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| I first read this novel a few years ago when the english translation was published by the fantastic small press, Lolli Editions. It was short-listed for the International Booker Prize in 2021 and after being out of print for a few years Olga Ravn’s back catalogue has now been acquired by Penguin who have republished this edition of The Employees, describing it as ‘a masterpiece of twenty-first-century literary science fiction’. They will also republish her other masterpiece (in my opinion) My Work later in the year, and her current title The Wax Child is currently out in hardback.
Translated from the Danish, The Employees has a brilliant subtitle; A Workplace Novel of the Twenty-Second Century, giving some preparation for the novel’s tone of both familiar banality and other-worldliness. The workplace here is a space ship of both human and humanoid employees, and they tell their story in the form of reports addressed to a third party who’ve been commissioned to investigate the employee’s changing behaviour toward some alien objects brought aboard the ship. The objects, which are both sculptural and creaturely, elicit feelings of longing, intrigue, and repulsion from the employees, sparking suspicion amongst colleagues and rumours of rebellion against the nameless corporation who employs them. Across the reports, Ravn also plays out a profound inquisition into the nature of memory and emotion, which the objects draw out from the crew. And if you are not a fan of science-fiction (I only dip into the genre now and then, but don’t worry, there is no world-building of new galaxies and alien species to familiarise yourself with), I hope you will appreciate this aspect of Ravn’s concise and shimmering turns of phrase on connection to people and place, and the human condition more generally.
Olga Ravn is a writer who regards form over style, thus each of her books are markedly different and pursue a form that fits the project. A fun fact about The Employees is that Ravn initially wrote it as an accompaniment to an art exhibition of sculptural works in Copenhagen, where a leather-bound copy lay in the gallery for visitors to read.
Happy New Year and Happy Reading!
Leah |
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| Is this what you wanted?!
This is the refrain that grinningly confronts readers of Fatale. I have read the book twice now, ten years apart. The first experience – all the stylised violence, the misogyny, the irony – remained with me long after the book’s gloriously gory end. It was just as satisfying the second time around, a couple of weeks ago.
I first encountered the book in the edition published in the U.S. by NYRB Classics, who publish the majority of Manchette’s work in translation, but never owned the rights to distribute in the UK. I was asked last year by a friend, Nick, who is the publisher at Vintage Classics, which writer was not currently in print in the UK that I would love to see available. After some thought, I replied with Manchette’s name. The next time I saw Nick he told me he had acquired the UK rights to Manchette’s novels, and they would be releasing them in 2026. Slightly stunned, and drunk with power, I immediately started looking forward to being able to sell these brilliant novels in the shop. The first of these is now with us.
Very sensibly, Vintage are starting with Fatale as the opening Manchette salvo. I love all of Manchette’s novels, and eagerly await the others coming out, but Fatale is the perfect introduction to his writing. It is an eloquent, if pulpy, summation of the anger and indignation with which he sees the world, and all the wry humour and style with which he assaults it. Fatale’s protagonist is the deadly apogee of the femme fatale. This classic noir trope is taken beyond its misogynistic origins to its logical extreme with Aimée, who seduces and murders her way through France, all the while asking us ‘is this what you wanted?’
I hope you enjoy it. If you do, you have more to look forward to in the coming months (thanks Nick).
-Tom |
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| This astounding debut novel opens in the aftermath of September 11th. At its uncompromising start Cora Brady, now an orphan following the attacks on the Twin Towers, moves to a remote part of Donegal to live with an aunt she doesn’t know. From there, Airey carefully unveils the layered, secret-riddled history of Cora’s family and the unresolved traumas of their past. The bone deep instincts of sisterhood and motherhood dominate, as does Airey’s preoccupation with the past’s ability to find its way into the present.
Architecturally the book is fascinating: there are four distinct points of view: Cora, her aunt, her mother, and her daughter – each given equal footing and dovetailing throughout the book. The novel is written in different styles, which alongside the different viewpoints add to the ambitious scope of the book. These different elements come to form in many ways an elegant kind of puzzle: the timeshifts and the change in narrative perspectives increasing the mystery as the Dooley women peel back the layers of the family’s history. That might make it sound a bit mechanical and forced. It is, in fact, the complete opposite. It’s hard to imagine writing with more untampered flow and engrossing momentum and I hope you get as much from reading it as I did.
– Joe |
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| This debut novel by Polly Barton announces an extraordinary new talent in fiction whose probing, inquisitive voice simply fizzes with intelligence and charisma. At GRB we must confess to being good friends with Polly Barton. I even had the privilege of hearing an early draft of a section of the book (which went in pretty much unedited), and in what seemed like just a year later the book was done. I knew it would be good but was still blown away by just how good it was.
What Am I, a Deer? follows its protagonist to Germany where, despite not being into gaming, she takes up a job in a world-famous games company. Embarking on what she hopes will be a first step toward a career as a Japanese translator, she is also lured by the prospect of her own personal reinvention. Her new life in Frankfurt offers a reset, maybe she will find an ease to her body and mind, maybe even amongst the alternative set of social values set forth by her gamer colleagues she will find her people?
One of the many wonderful aspects of this book is the style of writing that reads as if intrinsic with the shape of the young woman’s mind. Having established herself as a kind of ecstatic—an impassioned deep thinker— when she encounters a beautiful stranger on the tram in Frankfurt we know she’s in trouble. Hope for her reinvention falters as she falls into old obsessive patterns. The flowing prose of Barton’s writing is like a propeller, effecting what it is to be in this endlessly curious mind that turns over a broad scope of themes. This book is a spellbinding enquiry into the self and one’s place in the world and remains wholly authentic throughout even at its most playful and outlandish.
What am I, a Deer? also has the special stamp of being read and dearly loved by all five of the booksellers here. We are delighted to be offering our subscribers the exclusive Fitzcarraldo signed special edition.
Happy reading,
Leah |
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| This month’s subscription choice came to our attention when it was longlisted for the International Booker Prize. Now shortlisted for the prestigious accolade, I, for one, hope it scoops the trophy in a few weeks, such is the novel’s impact and resonance.
Assembled in four sections each set a decade apart and narrated by a different member of one family, the novel chronicles the plight of a pair of secular revolutionaries and their children following the 1979 Iranian revolution. The real change they and their fellow activists seek following the Shah’s fall fails to materialise as religious hardliners ruthlessly increase their control. The family flee Tehran for Germany, hoping to return when change comes.
What stands out for me in this marvel of a book is the superbly constructed and sustained tonal combination of dread, tension and forlorn hope, made more intense by the exiles’ distance from home. Ruth Martin’s adept translation skilfully maintains this atmospheric cocktail: the displaced family’s constant anticipation of news from Tehran, dreading what might befall family and friends yet clinging to the hope that the freedom they fought for might arrive.
The significance of the daily domestic activity Bazyar recounts is another striking feature. The whispered conversations, the glances, the silent acknowledgements in kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms during the most regular of activities: card games, cooking, family visits, tea drinking, intensify the overriding sense of dread and desperate hope, to such an extent that the novel in a way becomes a single, hushed, elongated in-breath.
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran is full of layers and effect, far more than can be noted here. I found it to be a very profound reading experience: illuminating, moving, unforgettable. I hope you encounter as much within it as I did.
– Joe |
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As readers we form ideas about a book before we even start to read. We take our cues from the title, the author, the cover, perhaps the publisher, the date and place of publication, and the blurb. We ignore the gushing quotes on the cover, these are rarely to be trusted and we are canny readers, are we not? As we begin reading, the process of assessing and orienting ourselves within the text continues. We want a pattern, we want to know what kind of world this is, what kind of experience we are going to have. Does this view of the world conform to ours or confound it? Eventually we settle into a groove, we find a pace and a place (some books can be read in bed, others demand a chair) in which to read, and we lock in.
Every now and then a book comes along that seduces us into one mode, and then abruptly shakes us into another. It is one of my most treasured reading experiences. Having our expectations exposed and confounded can be, when done well, exhilarating, and can tell us much about what it is we are doing when we read.
I had never read Beryl Bainbridge before The Bottle Factory Outing. The name conjured for some reason, for me, a slight fustiness. Fool! The new Daunt edition dispels any such daft preconceptions with its gloriously chaotic collage cover. The book begins with wonderful observational comedy. The settings are rich with mischievous humour, and the characters are drawn with a perfect balance of cruelty and sympathy. There is a wonderful mix too, of manners and absurdity. It means there are moments that I found I had to re-read, to be certain that I had correctly understood what had happened. The drab giving way to the ridiculous. It is a hugely enjoyable recipe, and I was very happy in this mode. Until, of course, I wasn’t. But I can’t tell you about that, can I?
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Tom |
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