Sydney 1936: there in the Cahill’s cafe, a strange male voice intruded, ‘Edith–Alva–haven’t seen you both for years.’ It was like the voice from a gramophone with a worn needle.
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.
‘Rosella and her co-creators curate an archive of pain, of endurance, of love and belonging, of alienation and disconnection.’
Nicole R. Fleetwood introduces the photography of Raphaela Rosella.
‘It’s hard to find a spot where the colony hasn’t reached; the landscape is consistently interrupted.’
Dominic Guerrera introduces artwork by James Tylor.
Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for the Pacific region.
‘The moments of relief in this awful year that will stick with me are roaming around at strange hours, walking in the middle of the road.’
‘The hard thing, as Alice saw it, was that something bad had happened to her and it was private and then it wasn’t.’
‘All good stories are both resonant and concrete; they live in the mind of the reader and reverberate beyond the pages of the book.’
