by Olga Ravn
First published 2022
Mia lives for her work. Her job shapes every aspect of who she is in a society that measures human value through employment alone. The office becomes her world, her colleagues her primary relationships, her tasks her reason for being. Then a strange illness begins spreading through the workplace. One by one, her coworkers fall sick. The disease moves through cubicles and conference rooms, disrupting the carefully ordered world Mia has built around her career. As the sickness spreads, the systems that once gave her life meaning start to crumble. Mia watches her colleagues succumb while she remains untouched by the physical illness. But she cannot escape confronting what lies beneath her work-obsessed existence. The epidemic forces her to examine the hollow spaces in her life that productivity and professional achievement have failed to fill. She must face the dehumanizing structures she has allowed to consume her identity and consider what remains when work disappears.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary, social-issues, psychological-thriller, workplace
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-study, dehumanization, existential-crisis
Setting: Office
Period: Contemporary
416 pages · Paperback · New Directions
Content warnings: mental-illness