{"product_id":"the-art-of-asking-your-boss-for-a-raise","title":"The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise","description":"“One of the most singular literary personalities in the world, a writer who resembled absolutely no one else.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Italo Calvino\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“A satire for the author’s day and oh yes our own on the subtly crushing effects of corporate life … [a] delectable and philosophical office farce.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Steven Poole, \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise\u003c\/i\u003e—neurotic and pessimistic, yet endearing, comic, and never less than entertaining—is a penetrating vision of the world of office work. As translator David Bellos writes, it shows us what ‘computers, perhaps even those powered today by AI, simply cannot do: make us laugh and make us cry’.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis playful novel originated with a 1968 invitation from IBM, then searching for a writer to explore the use of computers in literature. Georges Perec took up the invite and programmed an early computer to follow the steps an employee of a large corporation would take to submit a successful request for a raise. (Perec himself was such a lowly employee at the time, his prospects of getting a raise as dim as those of the narrator of this tale.) From that algorithmic experiment grew this pioneering and enduring fiction.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57487880978805,"sku":"9781804298510","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781804298510.jpg?v=1786355103","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/the-art-of-asking-your-boss-for-a-raise","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}