We Had to Remove This Post -- Hanna Bervoets, Hardcover

For readers of Leila Slimani's The Perfect Nanny or Ling Ma's Severance: a tight, propulsive, chilling novel by a rising international star about a group of young colleagues working as social media content monitors--reviewers of violent or illegal videos for an unnamed megacorporation--who convince themselves they're in control . . . until the violence strikes closer to home.

Kayleigh needs money. That's why she takes a job as a content moderator for a social media platform whose name she isn't allowed to mention. Her job: reviewing offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and deciding which need to be removed. It's grueling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform's ever-changing terms of service while a supervisor sits behind them, timing and scoring their assessments. Yet Kayleigh finds a group of friends, even a new love--and, somehow, the job starts to feel okay.

But when her colleagues begin to break down; when Sigrid, her new girlfriend, grows increasingly distant and fragile; when her friends start espousing the very conspiracy theories they're meant to be evaluating; Kayleigh begins to wonder if the job may be too much for them. She's still totally fine, though--or is she?

Author: Hanna Bervoets
Publisher: Harper
Published: 05/24/2022
Pages: 144
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 7.25h x 5.25w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9780358622369

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/17/2022
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/2022
Booklist 03/15/2022 pg. 46

About the Author

HANNA BERVOETS is the author of seven novels in the Netherlands and the recipient of the Frans Kellendonk Prize. She was also a resident at Art Omi: Writers in New York. We Had to Remove This Post is her first book to be translated into English. She lives in Amsterdam with her girlfriend and two guinea pigs.