The Glass Bees: a novel by Ernst Jünger. Gläsarne Bienen in German, first published in 1960.

Captain Richard, an ex cavalry man, is hard up and offered a job working for Zapparoni. Zapparoni is an successful businessman who manufactures tiny robots for industrial, entertainment, and possibly military purposes, and realer than real human simulacra that star in a new variety of cinema.

Captain Richard meets Zapparoni for an interview, and steps into a surreal nightmare.

The book gives one at once a feeling of wonder and terror about the technology it describes. It is notable for its prescience: The business climate and work ethic it describes are remarkably similar to those of the late twentieth/early twenty-first centuries.

An English translation is available courtesy of Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Mayer, and the New York Review Books edition features an introduction by Bruce Sterling (ISBN 0-940322-55-2)