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Hard Copy by Fien Veldman
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Hard Copy

A story of girl meets printer

$4.99

Retail price: $18.90

Sale price: $4.99

Discount: 73%

Translator Hester Velmans
Length 5 hours 48 minutes
Language English
Narrators James Faulkner & Sarah Slimani

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Bloomsbury presents Hard Copy by Fien Veldman, read by Sarah Slimani and James Faulkner.

'A talented new voice worth paying attention to.' Irish Times
'Equal parts searing intelligence and madcap sweetness. Simply brilliant.' Jenny Mustard
'Many astute observations... very funny on the tedium of office life.' Irish Independent

This is a story of girl meets printer.

A customer service assistant spends her long workdays printing letters. Her one friend is the printer and, in the dark confines of her office, she begins to open up to him, talking about her fears, her past, her hopes and dreams.

To her, it seems like a beautiful friendship is blossoming. To her boss, it seems like she’s losing her mind.

Diagnosed with burnout and placed on leave, she faces severance and – worse – separation from her beloved printer. But she’s not about to give up on her only friend without a fight. And, it turns out, neither is he…

Weird, incisive and unforgettable, Hard Copy is perfect for fans of Sayaka Murata and Halle Butler.

Fien Veldman is the 2021 recipient of the Joost Zwagerman Essay Award for her essay ‘Not really making it’, about growing up in a working-class neighbourhood in Leeuwarden. In 2018 she won the Elise Mathilde Essay Award for her essay ‘Borders, doors and eyes open’. Hard Copy is her debut novel.

Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

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Reviews

'Many astute observations about loneliness [and] class attitudes... very funny on the tedium of office life.' A talented new voice worth paying attention to. Despite its whimsical premise, Hard Copy is at its heart a joyful, tender, and strangely relatable novel. With sharp, playful prose Veldman tells a story in equal parts searing intelligence and madcap sweetness. Simply brilliant. This novel has it all. It's smart, captivating, poignant, absurd, moving, and terribly funny. Intimate and surprising at every turn, Hard Copy's distinct narrative voice took me right in from page one. A truly one-of-a-kind novel: I loved it. Rounded with sharp observations and surprising humour, Hard Copy is an incisive commentary on social isolation – a young woman’s desperate search for connection in these late-capitalist times. Dryly comic... You regularly wonder who is more disturbed here, the protagonist or society. A weird, understated and very well written book about a millennial meltdown A beautiful, at times absurdist and moving debut In clear, bright language, Fien Veldman accurately depicts a world, a social background, that eats its way through the individual... A novel like an autopsy. Absurdist and inventive. Fien Veldman knows how to deal with contemporary cultural phenomena, and she always approaches them astutely and surprisingly' Wondrous A beautiful book Expand reviews