On the way to the cricket fight, Mr Wu slipped us a piece of paper. It looked like a shopping list. ‘More numbers,’ said Michael, my translator. He read:
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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.
‘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.
‘A should probably write that it hit uz like a smack in the guts, or the red mist cem down or sumet like that, but in all honesty, a can just remember feelen upset.’
New fiction by Shaun Wilson.
‘Winning, it turns out, was the cracking whip that meant gamblers had to stay where they were until they lost their money all over again.’
Marina Benjamin on losing.
‘Before chintziness there was chintz, a fabric produced in India and imported to Europe by colonial traders.’
Sam Johnson-Schlee on what chintz means.
‘We claimed the places that were theirs and they were forced to take refuge on what we left behind.’
An excerpt from In Search of One Last Song.
‘What strikes an ex-patriate most about the contemporary British novel is its conformity, its traditional sameness, and its realistically rendered provincialism.’
