# There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job

- Author: Kikuko Tsumura
- Translator: Polly Barton
- Original title (Japanese): この世にたやすい仕事はない
- First published: 2015
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
- This edition: 2021
- ISBN: 9781635576917
- Shelf: Japanese Literature in Translation

## Card

A burned-out woman in her thirties takes a series of odd, low-key jobs, each stranger than the last.  
The deadpan voice and small workplace details make it funny, and underneath runs a quiet question about what work is for.  
For a night after a long workday.  

## About this book

The narrator, thirty-six, has left a career that wore her out and asks a job counselor for something with almost no substance. She ends up watching surveillance footage of a novelist, writing advertisements read out on a bus, and taking other small posts. Each job looks simple and turns out not to be. The book stays with the odd ways work shapes a person, and with the slow return of wanting something.

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- Title and author checked against Open Library (2026-10-27). No prices or stock.
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- Nijuyoji Bookstore (https://nijuyoji-bookstore.pages.dev/). Book data: Open Library and Google Books.