‘By the end of our journey together we had signally failed to understand each other, yet an unlikely, even unprecedented connection had formed.’
Until I was in my twenties, I had never seen an Aborigine. Black Australians constituted one per cent of the population, and that one per cent was mostly located on reserves outside rural towns, or in outback government and mission settlements.
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.
‘Hearing, they say, is the first of the senses we develop in the womb.’
’Shortly after its publication in 1980 I was surprised to learn that I had written a travel book’.
‘Is there in fact a jostling for dominance between the art forms, some barely suppressed competitiveness?’
Adam Mars-Jones on music and ceremony.
‘Into the carrot-coloured bag, alongside my clothes, I put the box with Mama’s urn.’
An excerpt from Oksana Vasyakina’s Wound, translated from the Russian by Elina Alter.
‘We talked about the snails in the yard that clung dying to the reeds of grass. At 5.05 he looked at his watch again. ‘Where’s the champagne?’’
