There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura

A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing, and ideally, very little thinking.

She is sent to a tall office building and is tasked with examining footage of a middle-aged novelist who is being surveilled 24/7, in order to detect the ‘contraband’ that has been planted in his house. But watching someone for hours can be so inconvenient – when can you go to the bathroom, and how can she take delivery of her favourite brand of tea? And, more importantly – how did she find herself in this situation?

As she moves from job to job, announcing adverts on buses for shops that mysteriously disappear, and composing advice for rice cracker wrappers that create thousands of devoted followers, it becomes increasingly apparent that she’s not searching for the easiest job at all, but something altogether more meaningful.