Olga Ravn, Martin Aitken (trans). Penguin, (144p) ISBN: 9781405976787. Science Fiction, read 09/10/25, Paperback ★★★★☆

The Employees

I had this waiting for me when I came back from my holidays, thanks Penguin as I’d had my eye on this in hardback and was definitely going to get it when it came out in paperback.

Set on an exploration spaceship in an indeterminate future where humanoid synths are indistinguishable from non-synths the crew has found ‘objects’ on a distant planet.

The book is written in the form of a series of interviews with both human and synth crew members about their feelings and the expedition and at first there is a hauntingly weird feeling throughout the crew concerning the objects that they’ve brought on board and this only gets more and more intense as we go through the interviews.

Full of longing and emotional trauma, but almost always seething just under the surface this is a lesson on isolation from your past and living with no past but an endless future compounded by unbefore met change.

Expertly paced and structured, playing with your initial confusion but lifting that fog as the book progresses.

Must have been a hard one to translate and keep this much atmosphere and depth.

Excellent read and will be looking forward the The Wax Child coming out at the start of November.