(It is the Danish writer’s second novel-she is also a poet, critic, and translator-and was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021.) Ravn’s plot depends too on the stock motif of a specimen-gathering spacecraft a long way from home, controls set for catastrophe. So it transpires in Olga Ravn’s laconic, discomposing The Employees. A sci-fi staple: if you invent a race of near-humanoid slaves, in time they will turn on you with vengeful intent, not to mention awkward existential questions. “Fucker” becomes “father” in later cuts of the film-unfortunate literalism. “I want more life, fucker!” says the replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner (1982) before he destroys the corporate scientist who made him. The Employees, by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken, New Directions, 125 pages, $ 19.95
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