Sternberg’s rule-breaking, genre-defying novel upends the humdrum workday world

A nameless employee stands outside the door to an office, hesitating to enter because he is five minutes late. This banal opening then launches into a frenetic narrative that switches genres, modes and universes with abandon. From an account of his feral childhood with a nymphomaniacal mother, to his early development of a third arm and a second head, the employee unspools his subsequent life as department-store wrapper, ladder-descending bureaucrat, traveling salesman, murder suspect and other occupations. Years return and reverse through a series of inflicted hellscapes as a tension builds between an untrammeled imagination willing to commit any crime and the inescapable rigidity of the mind.

First published in French by Les Éditions de Minuit in 1958, The Employee was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Humour Noir in 1961. This first English-language translation presents an entropic exercise of the imagination that will leave readers bewildered and breathless.

Jacques Sternberg (1923–2006) was a literary maverick, who wrote over 50 books that roamed freely through genre and influence without ever adhering to anything that might threaten constraint. He was briefly a member of the Panic Movement, founded by Fernando Arrabal, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor.