Beautiful Bureaucrat - Paperback

by Helen Phillips (Author)

"Chilling . . . the perfect summer page-turner." --Chicago Tribune

"Kafka would love The Beautiful Bureaucrat. . . . It's a surprising revelation of a book from an uncompromising author as unique as she is talented." --NPR

"Riveting . . . thrillerlike . . . Ultimately, The Beautiful Bureaucrat succeeds because it isn't afraid to ask the deepest questions." --The New York Times Book Review

In a windowless building in a remote part of town, a newly employed young woman, Josephine, inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. As the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings--the office's scarred pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echoes eerily down the long halls. When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread, in Helen Phillips's The Beautiful Bureaucrat.

Author Biography

Helen Phillips is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and the Italo Calvino Prize and more. She is the author of the widely acclaimed The Beautiful Bureaucrat. Her debut collection And Yet They Were Happy was named a notable book by The Story Prize. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Electric Literature, and The New York Times. An assistant professor of creative writing at Brooklyn College, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children.