‘With a disease as unpredictable as cancer, the opportunity to blame an actual person is an unexpected temptation.’
I spent the day of August 21, 1992, driving to a mountainous desert town whose name, in the scorching heat and fine dust, was a seductive mockery: Palm Springs, California. It was the most Californian of endeavours, an editorial retreat for the Los Angeles-based magazine where I worked. I ate dinner…
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.
‘Where do crimes begin and end, and who, decades later, can be held responsible?’
We knew Trump’s range: government by gesture; obfuscation and lying; self-praise; stoking fear and issuing threats.
‘Once I came home at the end of August, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Indeed, nothing had.‘
‘Every time I tried to write more, it turned out to be a fruitless endeavor – I felt like I was trapped in a sealed room with no windows.’
Fiction by Yu Hua, translated by Michael Berry.
‘Rub my scalp and tell me who I could have been. / Feed me a morsel or two.’
Two poems by Momtaza Mehri.
