A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker - NPR - WBEZ's Nerdette - The New York Public Library - Literary Hub A New York Times Editors' Choice 'One of the most passionate cases I've ever read for female interiority, for women's creative pulse and rich inner life.' ―Katy Waldman, The New Yorker 'Always expect the unexpected when you're not expecting.' ―Sloane Crosley A woman in Tokyo avoids harassment at work by perpetuating, for nine months and beyond, the lie that she's pregnant in this prizewinning, thrillingly subversive debut novel about the mother of all deceptions, for fans of Convenience Store Woman and Breasts and Eggs When thirty-four-year-old Ms. Shibata gets a new job to escape sexual harassment at her old one, she finds that as the only woman at her new workplace--a manufacturer of cardboard tubes--she is expected to do all the menial tasks. One day she announces that she can't clear away her coworkers' dirty cups--because she's pregnant and the smell nauseates her. The