For more about the author, including critical perspectives and in-depth biographies, visit the British Council’s web pages on Taiye Selasi.
Photograph © Nadav Kander
Taiye Selasi talks about her mother’s garden, Rachmaninov and learning to speak Italian.
For more about the author, including critical perspectives and in-depth biographies, visit the British Council’s web pages on Taiye Selasi.
Photograph © Nadav Kander
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
Taiye Selasi was born in London. She holds a BA from Yale and an MPhil from Oxford. Her short fiction was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2012 and she was named as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists in 2013. Her debut novel, Ghana Must Go, was published in 2013.
More about the author →‘She has the most genuine intentions of any woman out there.’
‘I am the full-time driver here. I am not going to kill my employers. I have read that drivers do that now.’
‘There has to be sameness if you are twins. If there isn’t it has to be invented.’
Taiye Selasi on trying to escape from twinhood.
Taiye Selasi, one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, shares a playlist of songs to write to.
A selection of Granta contributors discuss the books they read in 2012.
‘I was rather surprised to discover that I’d painted such a devastating portrait.’
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