The boss of the bad guys

In a back alley in Tokyo, the branch of a criminal organisation receives a directive from headquarters to increase diversity at the management level. Everyone resists, except the Big Boss. Realising that if he wants to stay alive he must do as he is told, he promotes his assistant to management trainee.

“Everyone has a boss who is born to the business. It’s not karma, nor luck, nor misfortune. It’s just the way it is.”

Boycotted by her colleagues and lacking confidence, the assistant decides to do the impossible to succeed. And, overnight, she is running speakeasies, making difficult demands, and fleecing clients. To her surprise, she discovers that she is excellent at doing evil, but her new ambition may have fatal consequences.

Drawing on a decade of experience living in Japan, Ricardo Adolfo offers a scathing reflection on contemporary work, the role of women in the corporate hierarchy, and the ethics of immoral companies.

Ricardo Adolfo was born in Luanda in 1974. He has lived in the suburbs of Lisbon, in Macau, London and Amsterdam. He currently lives in Tokyo. He has published the novels Mizé – Before the normal and the cured, the shopaholic and Maria dos Canos Serrados, the short story collection The sausages are all for roasting, and the collection of chronicles Tokyo lives far from Earth. He has also published the children’s books The laundry monsters and Minimini. For film and television, he wrote São Jorge, Sara and Great Yarmouth – Temporary Figures, all of which have won awards at national and international festivals.