Eleven executives are seated round a meeting room table. Their voices make up this novel. The president harangues them about cost cutting, restructuring, redundancy. As they feign attention the reader is privy to their most intimate thoughts.

There's the self-destructive violence of the former chief executive, the depraved cynicism of the man on the make, the gruelling daily routine of a working mother, the glacial despair of the HR director, the libidinous fantasies of the career bureaucrat. All have one thing in common: each of them, from the depths of their frustration, is at war with all the others.

At the centre of this Divine Comedy, like Lucifer with a business school sheen, reigns Rorty, the president, a blue-eyed corporate assassin. Gross Margin is a savage and hilarious novel about contemporary office life.

Translated by: Polly McLean