María Sirvent

The diary of an office worker (written during work hours).

“So, I’ve been like this for five months. Waiting for a ‘we regret to inform you that the company has decided that you should leave already, run like the wind, go and do what you always wanted to, jump, sing, leap and talk shit about us, gorgeous, you are lovely and we have no idea what you are doing with this pack of losers, respectfully, sincerely, warmly, all best, your boss who loves you and admires you and has had it up to here with seeing your face every morning and who doesn’t know if your inner life is overdeveloped, or if you’ve got a lot of mental problems, or if your sole companion is a half-dead geranium, or your boyfriend is a bad lay or if you just want to strangle us all, but we strongly urge you to leave behind this asexual rat circus, to forget about us and send a postcard when you find satisfaction which, as you are well aware, is something we know nothing about.”

A young woman from Madrid writes e-mails –which she never sends—to her former lover who recently moved to Japan for work, after breaking up with her. In her sarcastic and amusing messages, she tells him about her grueling life as an office worker: her romantic adventures with a colleague who is married, attractive and awkward; a made-up relationship that includes plans to marry in Paris; and a boredom with her work that leads her to concoct a painstaking strategy aimed only at getting her fired.

But in spite of not lifting a finger and spending her entire workday writing emails, her plans backfire and she is given an unwanted promotion. From that point on, things start happening very quickly. This novel’s very intimate, accessible narrative voice, whose ironic tone is filled with corrosive humor, gradually reveals an undeniable disenchantment.

"With this witty novel, María Sirvent will captivate the readers who are and will be forever young." Alfredo Bryce Echenique

"Life is sometimes like that and someone has to tell it. María Sirvent has the talent to do it." Ray Loriga

"Si supieras que nunca he estado en Londres, volverías de Tokio is a fresh story, full of humour, with a realistic language and a super contemporaneous structure: the anxiety arisen by a job one does not like and the shameful masks we cover ourselves with." Público

"Her writing is sparkling: If this story about remote love and almost marxist (but Groucho's) relationships at work,  is her first fiction, we are in front of a success maker–to-be." Tiempo

"A novel with the strenght of youth and the talent of an author who breaks schemes." Interviu