‘Old age is a sustained process of injury. You are being very distinctly shot at.’
‘I don’t know if you have any idea,’ he said, ‘how your bladder works?’ He didn’t pause for a reply; he was already sketching eagerly on a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘This sort of thing,’ he said. It was the Aswan Dam, I thought: a prodigious reservoir, prodigiously contained. And t…
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.
‘There was a red patch, and what looked like a slightly raised piece of dead skin in the centre of my chest. Just to the right of where I assumed my heart was.’
An extract from Gabriel Smith’s novel Brat.
‘Four Organs allows us to step out of time and briefly inhabit infinity.’
Maartje Scheltens on Steve Reich, repetition and discomfort.
‘This one – it’s a bit of a beast, he said.’
An extract from Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer. Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2022.
‘Ungraceful, the heart boinks: / drugged, suspended, spiderwebbed – ’
Four poems by Katie Farris.
‘He was our younger sister’s baby – her and her husband’s baby, I guess. They were young parents and excessively chill.’
Memoir by Emma Cline.
