Title:: [[The Employees]] Authors:: [[Olga Ravn]] Tags:: #fiction #sciencefiction #translatedfiction Read:: [[2025-05-12]] Instagram :: https://www.instagram.com/p/DJkXmtDOxrN/ ## Editions - Edition:: [[New Directions]], 2020 - Original Copyright:: 2018 - Pages:: 125 ## Purchase * Bookshop.org:: https://bookshop.org/a/94437/9780811234825 ## Annotations The Employees is a strange, scarce sci-fi novel that initially felt too lacking on details for me. It’s an account set in the future, told through brief statements from multiple perspectives, both human and humanoid. The lack of fleshed out context can be disorienting, and I struggled to find the rhythm I’d expect from a book structured this way.  But out of that struggle and sparsity I found room to think more about what was happening in its mundanity (to the extent that sci-fi can feel mundane, The Employees nails it). Out of that thinking came an interpretation of the relationship between humans and AI, robots, and our relationship to objects of our past and future. Ultimately, I’m not sure The Employees was for me, but these thoughts and feelings seeped in unexpectedly and I appreciate that about the novel. An interesting note that may explain some of this - The Employees was born from an artistic collaboration between Ravn and the Danish artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund. The latter approached Ravn in 2018 about writing something for her exhibition at the Institution of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. The show, Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present, exhibited objects and aromas that clearly inspired Ravn’s novel. More interdisciplinary collaborative art, please.  Translated by Martin Aitken.