How Can My Manager Be So Stupid?

The Office set in a Japanese bookstore, following one young bookstore clerk who can’t even with her idiotic manager while clinging to her passion for books against all odds.

Kyoko Tanihara loves books. Just about. But life at the Musashino Bookshop is starting to get her down. Instead of promoting her favorite stories, she finds herself distracted, tearing her hair out at the mere sight of her infuriating manager Takeru Yamamoto who can’t seem to do anything but get in her way of success.

From Yamamoto’s useless obsession with self-helps books to his cringey remarks on the hottest author in town, everything about Yamamoto seems designed to set Kyoko off. All that amid her struggle to make a name for herself in the publishing world, it's tough for her to keep her love of literature pure and alive. 

Until one day she is handed a book that speaks to all her frustrations, and opens her eyes to a whole new reality. What if there's actually more to her manager's obnoxious antics? What if, just maybe, her manager isn't so stupid after all?Kazumasa Hayami is a writer, born in 1977 in Kanagawa Prefecture. His debut novel 108 was a bestseller and later made into a manga and a film. He won the Japan Mystery Writers Association Award for his novel Innocent Days, and the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize for The Royal Family. His novels are almost all adapted for screen.

Haydn Trowell is an Australian translator of Japanese literature whose work has appeared in Granta, Electric Literature, and Words Without Borders. He has translated fiction by major prize-winning authors such as Yasunari Kawabata, Maki Kashimada, and Rie Qudan, and he has worked extensively with publishers in Australia, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S.. Haydn holds a PhD in translation studies from Monash University and has a background in both translation and creative writing.