Hilary Leichter, born 1985, teaches literary writing at Columbia University in New York.
With her ludicrously astute novel about a nameless temporary worker who moves from one fixed-term contract to the next and wants nothing more than a permanent position, she made a sensational debut.
“Die Hauptsache”, nominated for the First Novel Prize 2020, is now published in German.
A conversation about the capitalist world of work, the instability of our society and the great desire for stability.
WORLD:
Your heroine has 23 different jobs over the course of the novel.
Did you have that many?
Lighter:
Yes.
Maybe more!
I started counting ... I think I got 50+ jobs, maybe 60. When I moved to New York, I just said yes to everything.
There was a time when I had six or seven jobs at once.
It was very stressful.