There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job

'Wise, comical & exceptionally relatable' - Zeba Talkhani, author of My Past is a Foreign Country 

'Quietly hilarious & deeply attuned to the uncanny rhythms & deadpan absurdity of the daily grind' - Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti  

A young woman walks into an employment agency & requests a job that requires no reading, no writing – & ideally, very little thinking. 

She is sent to a nondescript 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 can be so inconvenient & tiresome. 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 trivia for rice cracker packages; punching entry tickets to a purportedly haunted public park--it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all, but something altogether more meaningful. And when she finally discovers an alternative to the daily grind, it comes with a price.
     
Kikuko Tsumura isa writer from Osaka, Japan. She is the winner of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize & numerous Japanese literary awards including the Akutagawa Prize, Noma Literary Prize, Dazai Osamu Prize, & a New Artist award.