How Can My Manager Be So Stupid?

Publisher: MACLEHOSE PRESS
Publish date: 9 March 2026
Pages: 320
Language: English

Subjects: Fiction, City Life, World Literature, Japan

A candid story of one woman's fight to find her place in life, clinging against all the odds to her passion for reading and for sharing stories.

Kyoko still loves books. Just about. But life at the Musashino Bookshop is starting to get her down. Above all, there's one question that keeps going round and round her head: How can my manager be so stupid?

From his obsession with self-helps books to his insistence on giving inspirational speeches at staff meetings, everything about Takeru Yamamoto seems designed to set Kyoko's teeth on edge. And, as the bookshop lurches from crisis to crisis, facing criticism from customers and authors alike, it's tough for her to keep her love of literature alive. Only the prospect of changing a life by handing over the perfect book keeps her going.

But then, she herself is handed a book that changes everything. Within its pages, all the struggles of her daily life are reflected back at her. Who could have written it? Was there more to her manager than meets the eye all along?

A winning blend of slice-of-life (somewhat romantic, occasionally ludicrous) comedy, satire and drama with a pinch of mystery to spice things up, this is the perfect read for anyone who has felt that they can't even . . . with the idiots that walk among us

Translated from the Japanese by Haydn Trowell