We Had To Remove This Post
Hanna Bervoets
Translated by Emma Rault
01 June 2023
9781529087246Synopsis
DOES WHAT YOU SEE CHANGE WHO YOU ARE?
Kayleigh is broke. Out of options, she takes a job as a content moderator, reviewing horrors and hate online and deciding which posts needs to be removed. Kayleigh is good at her job, and in her colleagues she finds a group of friends, even a new girlfriend. For the first time in her life, the future seems bright . . . But soon the job begins to shift Kayleigh’s world in alarming ways. In the glare of the screen, how long can Kayleigh hold on to her humanity?
We Had To Remove This Post is translated from the Dutch by Emma Rault.
‘A superbly poised, psychologically astute and subtle novel of mental unravelling’ - Ian McEwan, author of Atonement
‘This novel gives us an acid glimpse into a new form of labor existing today . . . Fascinating and disturbing’ - Ling Ma, author of Severance
The dank underside of social media, its cruelty and delusions, have become, our shared affliction. It needed an accomplished novelist to explore humanely the damage. Hanna Bervoets has richly obliged in this superbly poised, psychologically astute and subtle novel of mental unravelling. At its wonderful, hallucinatory climax, Kayleigh, the shattered protagonist, asks on our behalf the one true question, and the spellbound reader will usefully struggle for an answer.Ian McEwan, author of Atonement
This novel gives us an acid glimpse into a new form of labor existing today, a job that extracts an immeasurable psychic toll. Fascinating and disturbing.Ling Ma, author of Severance
We Had To Remove This Post is one of the most fascinating books I’ve read in years. Hanna Bervoets has created an astonishing and compelling cast of characters, drawn together through circumstance, separated by the same. The novel is fast paced and thrilling, violent and nightmarish and grief-stricken, but also tender and wildly moving. A brilliant peek behind the curtains at what happens when we put our trust in social media. Believe me when I say you’ve never read anything like it.Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth
