Harassment

"Harassment" is Kira Yarmysh’s second novel. Her first novel, “Incredible Incidents in Women’s Cell No. 3,” was about ten days in a special holding facility and drew readers’ attention with the sharp relevance of the topic. The second novel is no less timely. It examines the problem of harassment in the workplace as a comprehensive issue, without ignoring any of the ambiguous moments that appear in stories like these. “Harassment” is a novel whose title speaks for itself. Kira Yarmysh looks at this phenomenon from different angles: in the story there is no unambiguous tormentor and no unconditional victim. Everything happens by accident, just like in ordinary life—there is no line that people don’t cross. At some point it turns out that there’s no way back. Did Inga suspect that stroking her boss on the shoulder at a corporate event would set in motion an irreversible process? Did she know that violence by another person is not even the worst thing that can happen to a person? This novel shows how ambiguous relationships can be—how a perpetrator and a victim reflect each other and sometimes even change places. What is harassment, and when does it begin? And what is a person willing to do to break out of the vicious circle?…