A bitingly funny take on corporate life by the author of acclaimed bestseller Jennifer Government . At Zephyr Holdings, no one has ever seen the CEO. The beautiful receptionist is paid twice as much as anybody else, but does no work. One of the sales reps uses relationship books as sales manuals, and another is on the warpath because somebody stole his donut. In other words, it’s an ordinary big company. Or at least, that’s what everyone thinks. Until fresh-faced employee Jones—too new to understand that you just don’t ask some questions at Zephyr—starts investigating. Soon Jones uncovers the company’s secret: the answer to everything, what Zephyr Holdings really does, and why every manager has a copy of the Omega Management System . It plunges him into a maelstrom of love, loyalty, management, and corporate immorality—and whether he can get out again, now that’s a good question. Adult/High School–By turns amusing and wry, this novel is a pleasure to read. It opens with a view of a large corporation as seen by a new employee whose first day on the job is one of high suspense–one of the doughnuts for a staff meeting is missing. Moving beyond the usual cheap but funny shots taken at corporate life, Barry takes his tale to the next level. What if this giant maze for laboratory rats in which so many people work was actually just that? The characters are stereotypes but readers will sympathize with them, nonetheless. –Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Barry, an Australian writer, cut his teeth at Hewlett-Packard, and he's never been the same since. As Entertainment Weekly points out, his third novel owes a debt to The Office , The Truman Show , Animal Farm , and The Fountainhead , among others. Yet Company is truly Barry's own absurd satire on office politicsHR and outsourcing and all. Critics overlooked some of the flimsier premises, such as repeated discussion about the missing donut, because they found the novel so terrifyingly real. Its generic characters are so common you'll be able to put names to their joyless faces. Unfortunately, you may not muster up enthusiasm for them allespecially when you find out what Zephyr does. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. PRAISE FOR JENNIFER GOVERNMENT “Funny and clever . . . a kind of ad-world version of Dr. Strangelove . . . [Barry] unleashes enough wit and surprise to make his story a total blast.” — New York Times Book Review “Barry capitalizes on the strengths of the characters and ends up creating a brilliant finale to a clever story.” — USA Today “The plot rockets forward on hyperdrive . . . fresh and very clever.” — Boston Globe “A wicked and wonderful satire . . . Jennifer Government does just about everything right.” — Washington Post Book World “Extremely funny . . . Barry is a smart writer with a Cassandra’s gift for dark-edged prognostication.” — Time “A riotous satirical rant . . . [its characters’] excesses . . . make Barry’s world of unregulated corporate greed and unrelenting consumerism so frightening and funny.” — Entertainment Weekly “It’s Catch-22 by way of The Matrix .” — Kirkus Reviews “A thoroughly modern tale in the tradition of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley.” — Book MAX BARRY spent the best years of his life in the bowels of Hewlett-Packard, conducting secret research for this book. This is his third novel, following the cult hit Syrup and the bestselling Jennifer Government , which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book. He was born on March 18, 1973, and lives in Melbourne, Australia. He writes full-time, but enforces a strict dress policy, requires that his desk be kept tidy at all times, and asks that he limit personal calls to less than two minutes. It's not difficult to make business look ridiculous. People dress funny. They act in constrained, bizarre and obnoxious ways, fueled by coffee, adrenaline and fear. The organization bends and twists human characters, and the worst sociopaths are often the most successful at the game. Idiotic rules and regulations abound. Stupidity triumphs. Goodness is seldom rewarded. Best of all, for humorists and corporate anthropologists, is the fact that people under enormous stress are funny. Sad, too, of course, but amusing even then, as they rush about like rats on speed, trying to understand and manipulate the maze into which they have been placed. It's a lot harder for a novelist interested in more than simply mocking the poor suffering beasts. How is one to find the humanity that lurks beneath the infrastructure, the beating heart that drives even the most tepid accountant into flights of mad passion when the balance sheet aligns? Can we imagine these people outside the cubicle farm? Is it possible to enjoy the crazy, Byzantine stuff that drives a large organization without rendering it into some kind of alien planet where no