The Factory
Three new hires arrive at an enormous unnamed corporate factory complex in Japan. Yoshiko shreds documents. Her brother proofreads texts that may or may not exist. A third hire is brought on to study the factory's strange moss and ends up living inside the project for years. The factory has its own forests, its own buses, its own beach, its own school, and animals that no one can quite identify. Time loops. Days run together. Oyamada writes the entire book in calm, observational prose, slowly tightening the screws until the reader realizes the workers have been swallowed by the institution they work for and may never leave.
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Three new hires take pointless jobs at an enormous corporate factory complex in Japan and slowly disappear into a workplace with its own forests, animals, and uncanny logic.
The Factory was written by Hiroko Oyamada and originally published in Japanese in 2013. The English translation by David Boyd was released in 2019. Oyamada has also written The Hole and Weasels in the Attic.
The Factory uses three rotating narrators in a Kafkaesque corporate setting where work is increasingly meaningless. The novel is short, around 100 pages. The deadpan tone takes adjustment but rewards the commitment.
The Factory is a standalone novel by Hiroko Oyamada, not part of a series.
The Factory is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.