Olga Ravn

"Is this a human problem? If so, I'd like to keep it. The crew of the Six-Thousand Ship consists of those who were born, and those who were made. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike start aching for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Shopping and child-rearing. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory. Gradually, the crew members come to see their work in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether they can carry on as before-- and what it means to be truly living. Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Olga Ravin's crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity."--

A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century

The Employees

From the acclaimed author of The Employees, a radical, funny, and mercilessly honest novel about motherhood.

My Work

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, The Employees reshuffles a sci-fi voyage into a riotously original existential nightmare

EN ARBEJDSPLADSROMAN FRA DET 22. ÅRHUNDREDE Besætningen på Det sekstusinde skib består af menneskelige og menneskelignende ansatte. Da skibet får en række genstande ombord fra planeten Nyopdagelsen, begynder de ansatte at udvikle dybe forbindelser til genstandene, men uden helt at kunne forstå hvorfor. Snart ser besætningen sig selv i et nyt lys, og enhver ansat må spørge sig selv om arbejdsgangen kan fortsætte som før. Opbygget som en protokol med vidneudsagn forsøger den litterære science-fiction roman De ansatte at undersøge, hvad forskellen er på et menneske og en ting, og hvad det vil sige at være i live.

De ansatte

Shortlisted for the International Booker prize, The Employees reshuffles a sci-fi voyage into a riotously original existential nightmare Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids. Olga Ravn’s prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity.

The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century

Efter at have født et barn taber forfatteren Anna sin plads i verden. Stadig chokeret efter fødslen flytter hun med sin svenske kæreste, Aksel, og deres lille søn til et sneomsust Stockholm. Snart må parret se sig selv falde ind i gamle kønsroller mod deres vilje, og en afgrund åbner sig imellem dem. Angst truer med at opsluge Anna, der læser alt for mange nyheder på nettet og shopper alt for meget tøj, hun ikke har råd til. For at stå imod en truende galskab må hun læse og skrive sig til rette i verden igen. Mit arbejde er en roman om den enestående og grundlæggende erfaring at sætte børn i verden. Den blander prosa, digt, journal, brev og meget mere for at udforske forholdet mellem moderskab og skrift. En bog om fødselsdepression, husholdning og shopping. Og om hvordan man kan lære at elske det ængstelige, åbne liv med et barn.

Mit arbejde

En lærer på en kostskole er besat af historien om spøgelset Celestine. Med sig har hun sin nedtrykte kæreste Kim, bag sig en opvækst i en række sammenbragte familier. Som barn var hun skilsmissens sted, men nu lægger hun ansigt til et spøgelse. Kærligheden er blevet et arbejde. Hun går rundt på skolen om natten i en hvid kjole. Celestine er Olga Ravns første roman.

Celestine

Den hvide rose

Personel

الموظفون

Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids. Olga Ravn's prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity. It was shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize.

Los Empleados

Mitt arbete

Den vita rosen

Dans un futur indistinct, à des millions de kilomètres de la Terre, des employés travaillent sur le six millième vaisseau d’une puissante compagnie aux allures totalitaires. Il y a les humains et il y a les ressemblants. Ceux qui ont été enfantés et ceux qui ont été créés. Ceux qui vont mourir et ceux qui ne mourront pas. Sur une période de dix-huit mois, une commission compile une série de témoignages au sujet des relations et de la production à bord du vaisseau où l’activité consiste souvent à surveiller d’étranges objets bourdonnants, qui améliorent l’humeur, fécondent les rêves et hallucinent les consciences. Aussi glaçante qu’émouvante, cette science-fiction révèle le désarroi d’humains contraints de vivre loin de chez eux et les interrogations des ressemblants quant à leurs capacités émotives. Je sais que vous dites que je ne suis pas dans une prison ici, mais les objets m’ont dit le contraire.

Les employés

Tove Ditlevsen

Jennifer Russell

Sophia Hersi Smith

It was a meaningless day / like what you call / love // It was a Thursday / In parentheses. The brackets around it / Have already faded / Life tastes of ash / And is bearable. //

From one of Denmark’s most celebrated twentieth-century writers, the author of the acclaimed Copenhagen Trilogy, comes There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die, a major volume of selected poetry written throughout Tove Ditlevsen’s life. Infused with the same wry nihilism, quiet intensity, dark humor, and crystalline genius that readers savor in her prose, these are heartbreak poems, childhood poems, self-portraits, death poems, wounded poems, confessional poems, and love poems―poems that stare into the surfaces that seduce and deceive us. They describe childhood, longing, loss, and memory, obsessively tracing their imprints and intrusions upon everyday life. With morbid curiosity, Ditlevsen’s poems turn toward the uncanny and the abject, approaching gingerly. They stitch the gray scale of daily disappointment with vivid, unsparing detail, a degree of precision that renders loneliness psychedelic.

Speaking across generations to both the passions of youth and the agonies of adulthood, There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die reveals everyday life stripped of its excesses, exposing its bones and bare qualities: the normal and the strange, the meaningful and the meaningless. These startling, resonant poems are both canonical and contemporary, and demand to be shared with friends, loved ones, nemeses, and strangers alike.

Selected Poems

There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die

Jag äter mig själv som ljung. Flicksinne

Mean girl (et utdrag)

I dipendenti. Un romanzo sulla forza lavoro nel XXII secolo

Den ugifte adelskvinde Christenze Kruckow anklages for trolddom og må flygte fra Sydfyn til Nordjylland. Her bliver hun en del af en gruppe af kvinder omkring den smukke aalborgkone Maren Kneppis. Men snart indhentes Christenze af sit trolddomsrygte og må indse, at ikke bare hun, men også hendes veninder er i stor fare for at ende på bålet. Den centrale anklage mod Christenze er, at hun skulle have lavet et magisk barn af voks. Det er denne dukke, der nu tager ordet for at fortælle historien om kvindernes skæbne. VOKSBARNET er et portræt af et skrøbeligt fællesskab, et indblik i en magisk hverdag og en skrækindjagende fortælling om en hekseproces – baseret på en række virkelige hændelser fra 1600-tallets Nordjylland.

Olga Ravn

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