Book cover for Checking Out: The hilarious and unputdownable international bestseller by Meryem El Mehdati

Checking Out

The hilarious and unputdownable international bestseller

2025 Released
320 Pages
4-5 Hours
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Paperback Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
SceptreISBN 9781399734042
Translated by Julia Sanches

'So biting and refreshingly honest that the real world feels just a little more ridiculous by comparison'
Jinwoo Chong, author of Flux

'Honest, intelligent and funny'
Andrea Abreu, author of Dogs of Summer

Life is like a supermarket.

Her name is Meryem, but you'd be surprised at how difficult people find that to spell. Meryem is twenty-five years old and has just started working at the offices of Supersaurio: the most important supermarket chain in the Canary Islands. Watched over by the chain's benevolent blue dinosaur logo, Meryem contends with co-workers who don't mean to sound sexist, but aren't women just harder work than men?, a boss who seems determined to make Meryem's life as miserable as possible, and Omar - smart, funny, very-senior-but-nevertheless-seems-like-a-normal-person Omar, who also happens to be devastatingly handsome.

We follow Meryem as she makes the transition from intern, to temp, to arrive finally at the promised land of fixed employment - only to find that she might have left part of her soul behind.

Meryem El Mehdati

Meryem El Mehdati was born in 1991 in Rabat (Morocco) and moved toPuerto Rico, Mogán (Gran Canaria), when she was one month old. She currentlylives a quiet life in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. That’s what she’s looking formost: tranquility. She likes specialty coffee, taking selfies, sparkling water,Karim Benzema and Zinedine Zidane. Supersaurio isher first book. 

More by Meryem El Mehdati

Julia Sanches

Translated by

Julia Sanches is a literary translator working from Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. Recent translations include Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2024, Boulder by Eva Baltasar, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023, and Migratory Birds by Mariana Oliver, for which she won the 2022 PEN translation prize. Born in Brazil, she currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

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