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ARCHIVED Japan Society Book Club: The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada

Monday 10 February 2020 / 7:00pm
Japan Society Book Club: The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada

Date
Monday 10 February 2020
Time
7.00pm

Venue
The Japan Society

13 / 14 Cornwall Terrace
London NW1 4QP

Booking Details
Free for Japan Society Members

Book available from AbeBooks and Amazon
Japanese version available here

Book online here


In an unnamed Japanese city, three seemingly normal and unrelated characters find work at a sprawling industrial factory. They each focus intently on their specific jobs: one studies moss, one shreds paper, and the other proofreads incomprehensible documents. Life in the factory has its own logic and momentum, and, eventually, the factory slowly expands and begins to take over everything, enveloping these poor workers. The very margins of reality seem to be dissolving: all forms of life capriciously evolve, strange creatures begin to appear…

After a while—it could be weeks or years—the workers don’t even have the ability to ask themselves: where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin?

Born in Hiroshima in 1983, Hiroko Oyamada graduated from Hiroshima University in 2006 with a degree in Japanese literature. In 2010 she won the Shincho Prize for New Writers for The Factory, which was drawn from her experiences working as a temp for an automaker’s subsidiary. Her following novel Ana (Hole), about a woman who falls into a hole, won the Akutagawa Prize in 2014.

If you have any questions, please call the Japan Society office on 020 3075 1996 or email events@japansociety.org.uk.