In the early 1990s, the narrator is hired by Yumimoto, a powerful Japanese corporation. She will discover, to her cost, the implacable rigor of corporate authority, as well as the codes of conduct, incomprehensible to outsiders, that govern social life in the Land of the Rising Sun. From mistakes to blunders and failures, her inexorable descent into the hierarchy begins, as in a bad dream, until she reaches the rank of restroom attendant, the ultimate humiliation. An absurd race toward the abyss—a metaphor for life—where Amélie Nothomb's sharp humor hits the mark on every page. Poised between laughter and anguish, this satire of new despotisms, with its Kafkaesque echoes, has captivated a vast audience and earned the author of *Hygiène de l'assassin* the Grand Prix du Roman from the French Academy in 1999.
