The Cockroach

I'm ashamed to admit I spent more time than I should have figuring just how Reversalism would work. (Conclusion: It wouldn't.) In the book Reversalism is an economic system supported by the Prime Minister (not quite himself of late) in which the economy would flow backwards. One paid one's employer for hours worked and then received compensation for shopping, the whole system rounded out by penalization for the accumulation of wealth. The origins for this literary device lie in the novella's other literary device, his homage to Kafka:

He was beginning to understand that by a grotesque reversal his vulnerable flesh now lay outside his skeleton...

The Children Act