‘Real travel wants to be dangerous, wants to smoke out the truth of the Other—providing of course you get out alive.’
I asked to be taken to a hospital. I was possibly dying, and thought I should say so. Our guide, roaming the hotel to round up his charges for the morning tour, looked down where I had flung myself on a low padded bench against a wall in the pretentious lobby, and laughed out loud. Hooted. Then he t…
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‘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.
‘Beauty, for my grandmother and my aunts, was divided like a territory into estates, each part governed by a different seignior.’
‘The Eilat–Ashkelon pipeline went into operation in 1969, on the eve of the nationalisation of oil.’
Laleh Khalili on energy politics and the ‘secret’ pipeline transporting crude oil across southern Israel.
‘I sensed that as she listened she looked right through my skull and saw the cringing figure living there, the figure that keeps guard over all my secret strategies and disguises.’
New fiction from Ralf Webb.
‘I wondered how I could feel so at home in a place that was not mine.’
An excerpt from Jessica Au's novel Cold Enough for Snow.
‘Naturally, no partnership is perfect. Certain pieces will be at odds – you’ll have that.’
Fiction by Nico Walker.
