Amazement and trembling

"Shock and trembling" is a unique life experience lived by the author with little sweetness and bitterness that fills the pages, depicting through her descent into a despicable level in one of the major companies the other face of Japan, where work is the highest value, and where the company is the counterpart of life, indeed it is life, emotions become hardened before her, and human relationships become like fleeting encounters stolen from a fleeing time. With a satirical style characterized by economy in narration and intensification of dialogue, Emily Nottom sharpens her aged scalpel to dissect the world of work in Yumimoto, a Japanese company that devours its employees, so they devour each other according to their ranks, and each one is both executioner and victim at the same time, except for her, the contracted European who still lives on an emotional reserve from her childhood days in Kanzai, one of the Japanese prefectures where she was born and raised. Her position at the bottom of the career ladder did not allow her anything but to receive orders, even the humiliating ones… without discussion. This novel, adapted by French director Alain Corneau into cinema in 2002, is the most autobiographical of Nottomp's works. The young heroine of the novel finished her university studies, and because she lived in Japan and mastered the Japanese language, she obtained a one-year work contract in a prestigious trading company called Yumimoto.