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De ansatte (2018)

Book
De ansatte
9.0/10on Open LibraryPublished
Published in English as The Employees, Olga Ravn's novel lets a spaceship's human and humanoid workers speak through short statements to a committee. Their attachment to strange objects disturbs the boundary between programmed usefulness and inner life. The form makes you assemble the story from what official language cannot contain. Choose it for unsettling fragments rather than a conventional adventure. New Directions edition, translated by Martin Aitken: 144 pages.

About De ansatte

"Is this a human problem? If so, I'd like to keep it. The crew of the Six-Thousand Ship consists of those who were born, and those who were made. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike start aching for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Shopping and child-rearing. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory. Gradually, the crew members come to see their work in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether they can carry on as before-- and what it means to be truly living. Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Olga Ravin's crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity."--

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