‘What year was it? We have chosen to believe it was 1811’.
What year was it? We have chosen to believe it was 1811. Therefore: in the autumn of 1811, Alexandre Hemon got up from his slothful bed in Quimper, Brittany; sold, unbeknownst to his widowed mother, their only horse–a perennially exhausted nag–for thirty silver coins; and joined, after some adve…
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
‘Do writers of fiction have to create a cosmology in order to exist?’
‘I came to this fine country from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the winter of 1992, a couple of months before the war started.’
Aleksandar Hemon and Stuart Dybek on the energy and inspiration of Chicago, its exhilirating ‘incompleteness’, and the ‘unique perspectives of seeing the city’.
‘My grandmother was not my grandmother.’
