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This Life

This Life by Martin Hägglund—This is an account of life that doesn’t depart life to find meaning—to either faith in a knowing God, an ascetic renunciation of the world or liberal autonomy. Hägglund instead goes deeper into our lives. He develops a materialist ethics from our deep attachment to our singular life projects, relationships and places in both society and the natural world. His opening discussion of both Martin Luther’s and C.S. Lewis’ inability to overcome grief at the death of their loved ones in their deep Christian faiths is a profound model for this—faith does not give them an out from these very singular loving relationships, the finality of death instead draws them more deeply into them. An elegant reading experience that will get you rethinking ethics 101.

The Employees by Olga Ravn: Nominated for the International Booker Prize 2021. This philosophical novel makes the reader piece its strange story together from a series of anonymous interview statements given by the titular employees—sometimes giving more and sometimes less information, but always evoking some yearning that is subtly destabilising them. Ravn presents the familiar juxtaposition of androids and humans, but adds organic objects that sit in a third position—somehow both inanimate and sentient, like a rock that is an animal—to talk about the fluidity of bodies, a certain transhuman horizon, and the ways bodies merge emotion, memory and place.

There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura—This a lovely read about finding meaning when you are too far out to swim back. A 36-year-old woman in Tokyo, suffering career burnout, moves through five random jobs, trying to find the one requiring the least effort or engagement. She finds something else. As people, buildings and businesses disappear and reappear, she finds stories, mysteries, passions and… well… comfort foods and yerba mate. She finds herself not alone in finding work confounding: a source of meaning but also obstruction. Tsumura is part of the new generation of women currently making their mark on Japanese literature. Here she is subtle, absurd and quietly acerbic; it’s a mood to dwell in.