Wan Sakamoto
Astra House
22 June 2027
96
eBook - EPUB
Contemporary
ARC via NetGalley
Within a perpetual cloud of mist lies a delivery sorting warehouse, where seemingly faceless workers rush to handle the relentless stream of packages flowing down conveyer belts. Among them is An, who passes the entirety of his shifts barely uttering a word to his fellow colleagues, instead alleviating the monotony by imagining the contents of the boxes while fighting the forbidden desire to sneak a peek—until one day he cannot help himself. His is one of four perspectives of the same workplace, the three others being his line manager, a newly arrived woman who thinks of revolution, and an old colleague who wants to save his wife but drinks too much.
Can one maintain a sense of self amidst the physical and psychological confinement of a society that dispassionately churns on in the name of efficiency? Sitting alongside the likes of Hiroko Oyamada’s The Factory, Olga Ravn’s The Employees, and Apple TV’s Severance, BOXBOXBOXBOX is an unsettlingly sharp novel from one of Japan’s freshest literary talents, scrutinizing the alienation and isolation induced by the modern workplace, while hinting at the radical possibilities of solidarity against it. Powered by the almost demonic momentum of its rhythmic and finely wrought prose, and sprinkled with jet-black humor, the novel draws the reader into a chilling, meticulously calibrated vision of contemporary precarity—and how four individuals choose to defy it.
BOXBOXBOXBOX is a short but atmospheric and thought-provoking work. We are launched immediately into the world of the sorting warehouse staff where everyone gets through their shifts in their own ways, alone and mostly silent, separated from one another by a pervasive mist that seeps continually through the building. Perhaps mirroring the mist, the four POVs switch constantly, even from paragraph to paragraph, weaving in an out of one other in a way I found a little off-putting at first but quickly got used to. Despite the short time we spend with them, each character feels individual and well rounded, and all represent different facets of modern working life. These real-life hardships and problems are presented through a lens of fairly dark humour that, coupled with the ever-present mist, gives everything a sense of the uncanny. This is certainly a very different style work and one I will remember for a long time. I am giving it 4 stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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