‘In the nineteenth century, Charles Baudelaire wrote of Paris being haunted by its past, by ‘ghosts in daylight.’
One cold evening in late November last year I left my flat in southern Paris, took the métro to Saint-Denis, a suburb to the north of the city, and then a bus to an outlying council estate, or cité, called Villiers-le-Bel. The journey took little more than an hour but marked a sharp transition bet…
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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.
‘What I like most is that the staff are all card-carrying Communists – very militant and all passionate about what they are doing.’
‘Ask anyone in Ayodhya, and they will say the city’s Hindu–Muslim harmony can withstand any test.’
Snigdha Poonam on the construction of a Hindu temple on the ruins of a mosque in Utter Pradesh.
‘The whole arc of the failed promise of development became legible in the traces of the gold rush.’
James Pogue reports from the gold mines of Mauritania.
‘Against the backdrop of the Russian onslaught, all everyday concerns, the facts and things that make everyday life, literally life, seem like luxuries.’
Yevgenia Belorusets on conscription in Ukraine.
‘The town’s fate was tied to poor development and ecological disaster.’
Amitava Kumar visits a Himalayan town.
‘Human nature is not improved by concealment, especially when it comes to the past.’
A short story by Andrew O’Hagan.
