The Employees by Olga Ravn

 

The Employees by Olga Ravn.

Published 2nd October 2020 by Lolli Editions. Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken.

From the cover of the book:

The near-distant future... Millions of kilometres from Earth...

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, Ravn’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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What a weird and wonderful little book! Imagine, if you will, an HR report comprising interview statements following an incident in a futuristic workplace, spun into a highly conceptualised sci-fi drama, by way of Alan Dean Foster's Alien, Michael Crichton's Sphere and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?... whacky, eh? But it is also rather brilliant.

The statements are generally pretty sketchy and the anxiety of the interviewees is almost palpable as they answer the questions put to them about the goings on aboard the Six-Thousand Ship and on the surface of New Discovery. Intriguingly, the interviewers' side of the conversations is not recorded, until the summation near the end of the book, so it is up to the reader to fill in the gaps, and it's all the better because you are never quite sure why they have gone to New Discovery in the first place. In fact, the stark nature of the whole book means it is up to you to join the dots yourself, and I found this very enjoyable - it's as if the author gives you permission to let you imagination run riot!

Although the witness reports are rather brief, and in some cases only a scant few lines, as the book progresses they build a chilling picture. You are aware that the experiment being carried out by this mission has gone seriously awry, precipitated by the arrival of the mysterious objects, and the tension mounts splendidly to an ending that serves as somewhat of a warning to us all. Woven into the plot are some very philosophical and thought-provoking themes, some of which are particularly poignant - such as, the yearning of the human crew members for what they have left behind, and the longing to be "more" and desire to survive of their humanoid co-workers.

This is a disconcerting and disquieting book and I take my hat off to the translator Martin Aitken for his stellar (please pardon the pun) work here in producing such a powerful work in a language other than the original. It is one that I will be mulling over in the wee small hours of the morning when sleep refuses to come, though perhaps, this is better than the nightmares that might otherwise be inspired by the subject matter!

The Employees is availalable to buy direct from Lolli Editions HERE, or via your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to Lolli Editions for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Olga Ravn (b. 1986) is a Danish novelist and poet. Her novel Celestine appeared to critical acclaim in 2015. She is also a literary critic and has written for Politiken and several other Danish publications. Alongside Johanne Lykke Holm, she runs the feminist performance group and writing school Hekseskolen.

About the translator:

Martin Aitken has translated numerous novels from Danish and Norwegian, including works by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Peter Høeg, Ida Jessen, and Kim Leine. He was a finalist at the U.S. National Book Awards 2018 and received the PEN America Translation Prize 2019 for his translation of Hanne Ørstavik’s Love.