Contemporary
A razor-sharp satire of modern bureaucracy, office culture, and digital obsession. Guaranteed to make you laugh and wince in equal measure.
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This irreverently satirical book pokes fun at the bureaucracy rampaging across quango-land; the vagaries of office life, with its endless meetings, counter-productive wellness programmes and pointless motivational events; the absurdity of many corporate visions and missions; the comicality of jargon beloved by officialdom; the pomposity of inflated job titles; political correctness gone mad; and the wholesale takeover of our daily lives by digital technologies, including artificial intelligence.
The book also attempts to defuse – albeit in a light-hearted way – some of the usage booby-traps strewn across the English language.
We laugh at the comical name and farcical purpose of the organisation parodied in the book, at its absurd hierarchy and taxpayer-enabled profligacy, at the pointlessness of its frenzied working practices, at the abundance of its committees with their ridiculous names and remits and at its surreal rebranding exercise.
We also chuckle at the highly inventive names of the book’s protagonists and gasp in disbelief at the linguistic ineptitude of the organisation’s editorial team and at the ludicrous phraseology used by the mocked bureaucrats in their countless policies, directives, rules, regulations, edicts, decrees, statutes, precepts, schedules, memoranda and the like.
Here's what readers have to say about this book....
In her latest book, Anna Nolan skewers the pointlessness, waste and bizarre language of government bureaucracies. Drawing on her experience of working in the government sector, we encounter a caste of officials caught in an a stifling web of jargon, regulations, position papers, targets, meetings and linguistic absurdities. Very enjoyable and highly recommended.
In her latest book, language-lover Anna Nolan turns her satirical pen to the corporate world and its crazy jargon, absurd working practices, and never-ending bureaucracy. The result is a highly amusing portrayal of an imagined organisation, the Foremost Authority for the Radicalisation of Transformation (acronym: FART), with its endless committees, pointless rules and regulations, and – perhaps best of all - its linguistically-inept editorial team. Anna’s inventive naming of the organisation’s employees (e.g. Nota Clue, Ashton Ishing, Millie Tant) is a particular delight, as is her narrator’s success in teaching the junior staff the rudiments of English grammar, while decoding their youthful slang. Great fun and highly recommended!
An amusing read about the way that some large organisations organisations operate, in a satirical vein. Anna weaves some of her autobiographical experiences, along with her own insights and interpretations of life in Britain, after moving from her native Poland. Uniquely funny!
Anna's new book is a pleasure to read. It is extremely clever, in my opinion, if you respect standard English and despair at its continuing demise. Described as a satire it seems to be more of a realistic account of modern day pretentious office managers who arrange meetings without a purpose or outcome. Well done Anna!
Anna Nolan's latest book maintains the satirical humour in her previous books but on a new theme - the bureaucracy to be found in large organisations, particularly in the public sector. We are introduced to implausibly named senior managers and staff, who are kept busy attending pointless committee meetings, writing vacuous position papers and enjoying extravagant away-days. As usual, Anna corrects their poor use of English along the way and educates her readers in the process. An excellent and entertaining Christmas gift for anyone who works in an office!
