Photograph courtesy of the authors
‘Four Syrian Borders’ is product of a joint collaboration between Granta and the International Literary Showcase, an initiative supported by Writers’ Centre Norwich, the British Council and Arts Council England.
‘The landscape, glimpsed through plumes of dust thrown up by trucks, grew drier, more hostile as it climbed away from the sea.’
Photograph courtesy of the authors
‘Four Syrian Borders’ is product of a joint collaboration between Granta and the International Literary Showcase, an initiative supported by Writers’ Centre Norwich, the British Council and Arts Council England.
‘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.
Esa Aldegheri is an academic and activist working in the field of migration and integration. She speaks five languages, is a researcher at the University of Glasgow and Chair of Edinburgh City of Sanctuary. @aldeghesa
More about the author →Gavin Francis is a physician in Edinburgh and the award-winning author of Empire Antarctica, Adventures in Human Being and Shapeshifters. He's a regular contributor to the Guardian, LRB and the New York Review of Books. www.gavinfrancis.com @gavinfranc
More about the author →
‘Many of these residents are unable to afford life in Shanghai and refer to themselves as “the living dead”.’
Leslie Shang photographs vacant apartments and the people who have made them their homes.
‘My father said there is fate and destiny governing each of our paths, of individuals and of nations, and this only the dead may know.’
Aube Rey Lescure on returning to China.
‘It would be wrong to say she hasn’t experienced life. Instead, it would be more apt to describe her as someone whom time has slipped by without leaving the slightest trace.’
Fiction by Wang Anyi, translated by Michael Berry.
‘In the years before his stroke, just how many times had her father told a woman he loved her after dating for two or three weeks?’
Fiction by Elvira Navarro, translated by Christina MacSweeney.
‘They started out as fraternities, the cults. Poorer students wanted strong networks, like the ones boarding school pupils had already.’
Fiction by Toye Oladinni.
‘The message that vegetarianism imparts to the rest of us is ascetic and exclusive.’
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