Perfectly normal men and women head to their desks every day in a city laid waste by guerrilla incursions, menaced by hordes of starving people, murderous children and cloned dogs, patrolled by armed helicopters, and plagued with acid rain. Among them is an office worker willing to be humiliated in order to keep his job-until he falls in love and allows himself to dream of someone else.

To what depths is a man willing to go to hold on to a dream? The Clerk tells a story that happened yesterday, but still hasn't happened, and yet is happening now. And we didn't even notice, too tied up in our jobs, our salaries, our appearances. This novel embraces an anti-utopia, a world of Ballard but also of Dostoyevsky.

Love, sex, and corporate slavery in a futuristic world from the two-time winner of the Dashiell Hammett Prize

"A strange book in the best sense of the word. This is not an ordinary novel, it will surprise many."-Rodrigo Fresán

"A discovery; an anti-utopian moral story with raw, carefully-crafted writing; among the best I've read in a long time."-Rosa Montero

"The precision of the writing is entwined with the author's visionary capacity."-Pere Gimferrer, member of the Premio Biblioteca Breve jury

"A book both powerful in what it tells and brilliant in what remains silent."-Menéndez Salmón

"There's something about the book that is decidedly addictive, a real page-turner."-Yann Suty

"By inserting a cold, heartless but all-too-familiar corporate environment into an ultra-violent urban universe, The Clerk draws a chilling portrait of the savagery and difficulty to love that characterize contemporary society, and especially of alienation produced by bureaucracy."-Charybde 27

"With spectral serenity, suggestive images, and outstanding stylistic coherence, Saccomanno ... unravels the story of a contemporary slave in only 55 chapters."-Die Welt

"Saccomanno has a superb command of horror. The Clerk is an existential expressionist blend of office novel and film noir."-Berliner Zeitung