‘Soaring and plunging, the revolution is like a kite in an uncertain wind.’
Soaring and plunging, the revolution is like a kite in an uncertain wind. People live normally, ordinarily – and also on the edge of sanity and peril. The cast of characters might be from one of those Renaissance canvases that seems to include everyone in Florence: the Jinotega coffee-grower who p…
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‘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.
‘The whole family: yay. I love my family. (Don’t I.)’
Fiction by Victor Heringer, translated by James Young.
‘We wanted work of the imagination. Fiction. Consciousness captured on the page.’
Guest editor and co-founder of Granta en Español introduces the issue.
‘But as everyone will surely know, that’s not what came to pass.’
Fiction by José Adiak Montoya, translated by Samantha Schnee.
‘I would explain to you then, if I could, the theory that in the case of hairline shape, there are two possible variants or alleles: straight, or widow’s peak.’
‘The wave had erupted with such force that it obliterated the glass lobby.‘
A short story by Gabriel García Márquez, translated by Nick Caistor.
‘What the bottom line always comes to is the old two a.m. cry: We can’t go on living like this.’
