The narrator of this novel is in school in order to consolidate her professional future. She has obtained a temporary position in an administrative office, and a competitive examination seems to be the next logical step in her career. However, another type of exam, an internal one based on her observations of the daily life of a civil servant, makes things not at all clear. The building she has been assigned to, as gigantic as it is hermetic, is a place of incomprehensible hierarchies, which both alienates and absorbs her. Since no one explains her duties to her, she is forced to improvise, pretend out of shame, and record her discomfort through drawings and poems that are as removed from reality as the work itself. The civil servants who surround her, each with their own particularities and conflicts, have developed the tics and manias typical of work routines and uncritical obedience. In need of a useful life, of a true pulse and a game, the examined will make small subversive decisions without foreseeing their possible disciplinary consequences. 

Through a curious, avid, and increasingly disenchanted perspective, Oposición describes the traps of bureaucratic mechanisms not only for those who suffer from them, but for those who put them into operation. The incisive Sara Mesa, who knew the administrative world from the inside, approaches a story of contemporary bureaucracy from the perspective of someone trapped in the dead time of useless tasks, dealing with the problem of boredom and apathy in a brilliant, biting, and relentlessly paced narrative. Its protagonist, like a haphazard and involuntary heroine, faces the worst and most disturbing of absurdities: the way we organize ourselves in society. 

“Sara Mesa is characterized by her masterful reflections on sentimental disenchantment, the imbalances of a consumer society, the evocative persistence of childhood, the motives of desire, the value of vital experiences, the redemption of guilt, the tragedy of abandonment, and the liberating power of writing… Witty anecdotes, corrosive humor, and the parodic tone of dislocated situations make up this incisive diatribe against sterile and irrational bureaucracy. A good rhythm, an ironic critical tone, and a well-crafted plot and setting make up the best parts of this notable novel.” —Jesús Ferrer, La Razón

“Oposición is an ample, exquisite, and admirable novel about lack of communication with a fireproof reflection that beats within.” —Andrea Toribio, El País – Babelia

“Oposición is a hilarious and delirious tale about contemporary bureaucracy.” —Andrés Seoane, El Mundo – La Lectura

“With her versatile, concise, and expressive language, Sara Mesa uncovers something that, despite all of us knowing about it, is difficult to narrate in Oposición. The hidden face of the great monster of administrative bureaucracy… The writer confirms and expands on the talent she has demonstrated in her previous work… One of the great writers of our country… An exemplary novel.” —Javier García Recio, La Opinión de Málaga

“Normality narrated down to the millimeter in order to find the everyday nonsense that, by force of habit, seems legitimate to us. She experienced this from the inside and now, is sharpening it and giving it editorial value. After her success with books like Un amor or Cicatriz, Sara Mesa has gone even further when it comes to her capacity to portray sordidness. We approach her pages with our eyes half closed, like when watching a horror movie, because of how much that sordidness tells us about our most intimate condition.” —María Paredes, The Objective

“In Oposición, boredom and ingenuity, observation and dissection, restlessness and uneasiness all weave together a story that invites questions, X-rays the absurd, and appeals to words in order to open spaces in the human condition.” —Guillermo Balbona, El Diario Montañés

“Oposición by Sara Mesa is an ethical rebuttal of the office system, its disconnection to the society it should serve, and its operating logic that drives workers to boredom… In this way, Oposición is also an ethical rebuttal of the bureaucratic system, its disconnection to the society it should serve, and its operating logic that drives workers to boredom, apathy, and even cynicism… Mesa skillfully navigates silences and omissions; what goes unsaid becomes particularly eloquent, and bureaucratic jargon, created to be obscure and difficult to comprehend, dismantles itself through its enunciation.” —Anna Maria Iglesia, El Periódico – Abril 

“In Oposición, which at times resembles The Office, Sara Mesa approaches the problems and absurdity of the administrative world with a sense of humor. The novel has depth and momentum when the author fearlessly surrenders to rowdiness.” —Aloma Rodríquez, El Mundo – La Lectura

 "Since she was shortlisted for the Herralde Novel Prize with Cuatro por cuatro, Sara Mesa has been exploring a swampy moral territory in her narrative, a realm of ambiguity in which goodness and evil, acceptability and reprehensibility, placidity and threats come together and transform each other to induce an active restlessness in the reader." —Domingo Ródenas, El Periódico

"I love her ability to map the human condition through losers, abuses of power, oppressive and isolated places, slow and continued degradation. That is why I'm interested in her novels: because they're always harsh, bitter, sincere, dark, not at all complacent, and slow as a drop of water." —Ángeles López, La Razón

"As you find yourself trapped in Sara Mesa's web, you wonder how she does it: what the substance that glues you to her books is made of, that tar that stains you while you read them and then for hours and days after you close your copy." —Carlos Zanón, El País

«Mesa's writing asserts its strict literary character in each line." —Manuel Hidalgo, El Mundo

«Mesa writes with a prose that is free of cliches, polished and precise." —Martín Schifino, Letras Libres