Photograph © David Levenson/Getty Images
The author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid, talks to John Freeman on The Granta Podcast.
Photograph © David Levenson/Getty Images
‘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.
Mohsin Hamid grew up in Lahore, Pakistan. He studied at Princeton under Toni Morrison and Harvard Law, and currently lives in New York City.
More about the author →John Freeman is the founder of the literary annual Freeman's and an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. He is also the author and editor of eleven books, including Dictionary of the Undoing; There's a Revolution Outside, My Love (co-edited with Tracy K Smith), and Wind, Trees, a new collection of poems. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and been translated into more than twenty languages. Once a month he hosts The California Book Club, an online discussion of a classic book of golden state literature for Alta magazine. He lives in New York City.
More about the author →‘I have come to believe that we are all migrants, that the experience of migration unites all human beings.’
‘I think of betrayal as a crack in the veneer of humanity, an act that reveals to us, and others, our base animal nature.’
‘She does not stare at you, but when your eyes meet, she does not look away.’
‘Fundamentalist mangoes must have more texture; secular mangoes should have artificial flavouring.’
Elsa Court on why Vladimir Nabokov immersed himself in the all-American world of roadside service stations.
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