Beyond the town, there is the factory. Beyond the factory, there is nothing.
Within the sprawling industrial complex, three employees are assigned to different departments. There, each must focus on a specific task: one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. As they grow accustomed to the routine and co-workers, their lives become governed by their work. Days take on a strange logic and momentum, and little by little, the margins of reality seem to be dissolving: Where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? What’s going on with the strange animals here? And after a while – it could be weeks or years – the three workers struggle to answer the most basic question: what am I doing here?
With hints of Kafka and Beckett and unexpected moments of creeping humour, The Factory is a vivid, and sometimes surreal, portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of the modern workplace.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 128
Imprint: Granta Books
Publication date: 07/01/2025
The Factory
by Hiroko Oyamada
Review by Maia
This short novel follows the separate lives of three workers, each newly employed at the prestigious corporate company that permeates the infrastructure of their entire town. The chapters of this book rotate in perspective between the three characters and we witness as they dismiss their instincts, suppress their suspicions and attempt to convince themselves to believe the seductive promises of corporate ease. The longer they spend in The Factory, the more strange and frightening the place becomes, seething with a sinister coercion. This novel showcases the cunning ways corporations control, manipulate and puppeteer the proletariat, a consuming and punchy read.
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