With the glitzy parade of the Oscars behind us, it seems a good moment to sit back and… well, watch a film. But also to think about what it means to do that. What’s behind it all, and why should we care? Is a life in Hollywood bound to end in tears? (Or should I say, in blood?) What should we do if our childhood heroes become record-breaking porn stars? Why are we fools for the same old clichés? And do we just go to the movies to see our own relationships reflected and idealised?

In a special-feature week on granta.com, we will be examining that big-screen phenomenon, with pieces from our film issue of 2004 as well as new writing.

What to look out for...

On Monday, Colson Whitehead goes through the motions of a cinema visit with a loved-one. ‘This is the part with the montage sequence. Their love grows, pruned by expert editors.’

Gaby Wood re-visits the site of a controversial death on Tuesdsay: that of actress Lana Turner’s lover, Johnny Stompanato, stabbed by Turner’s fourteen-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane. The house is a Hollywood Mecca for ‘Lanatics’, hardly changed since that much-debated occasion – but it guards its secrets carefully.

On Thursday, a new and exclusive article will look at writing for film. Jeremy Sheldon, author of novel The Smiling Affair and short-story collection The Comfort Zone, will examine the often-overlooked contribution that writers make to the cinema. This isn’t the same old rant about insufficient credit for writers – we’re talking about an alternative literary art.

The week will end as Granta’s film issue did – with a whimsical reflection by Turkish film auteur Atom Egoyan on Friday. Egoyan first saw Philip Toubus – a.k.a. Dr Gonad – in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. The industrious Doctor went on to produce forty instalments of Swedish Erotica in a single year – starring in many of them himself – and took his last directorial credit for Weapons of Masturbation.

This is the first of several themed weeks the site will be running this year, combining the riches of our archive with – what else – the freshest new writing. See you there...

(Using Google Reader or RSS? Click here to subscribe to our online-only pages and you’ll get all our posts delivered straight to your inbox)

Francis Spufford said of Amy Sackville’s debut novel The Still Point: ‘If Virginia Woolf had had a younger sister with a passionate interest in icebergs, she might have written something like this beautiful, unearthly novel, in which the secrets of a house and of a marriage continually open out onto a wild glare of Arctic light.’

The book has been longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, alongside Hilary Mantel and Andrew Levy; it was also chosen as a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. It takes place over the course of a single day in the present, underpinned by the story of a missing explorer at the turn of the twentieth century, whose wife awaits his return for decades.

In an exclusive BBC recording for granta.com, Amy talks about her inspiration for the book, and how she made such a fertile imaginary space out of a seemingly barren land. Click on the player below to listen:

More...

Watch a video interview with Eleanor Catton, also longlisted for this year’s Orange Prize – for her debut novel The Rehearsal.

Granta 101 featured a photo essay of the Arctic by Gautier Deblonde. The haunting images showed abandoned Soviet research stations and awesome vistas, but also moments of life near the pole – human and otherwise. You can buy the issue here.

Francis Spufford also contributed to Granta 77 and 67.

Author photo © Peter Schiazza

Last year, Ruchir Joshi travelled around rural India for our ‘Work’ issue, documenting parts of the country’s informal economy, and meeting people with working lives that are unseen, or unique, or damaging. The resulting series, ‘Moving Parts’, includes visits to both the manager of a silica quartz factory and the victims of its lung-clogging dust (in ‘Prajapati’ and ‘Hajiriya and Gajiriya’); a conversation with a man who lives by ‘country-made pistols’ fashioned from steering rods; and a ride through the country with a pair of entrepreneurial road-contractor brothers (‘Guddu and Pintu’).

The series closes with this video, which shows Shahid, a manual tyre-cutter, at work. It is a craft that takes years to learn, and which allows him to imitate perfect, machine-cut treads.

You can read some of the essays mentioned above by visiting our issue page for Granta 109, or by buying the issue and benefiting from our online discount.

We have a signed edition of Granta’s ‘Best of Young American Novelists 2’ to sell. Originally published in Spring 2007, the issue showcased Jonathan Safran Foer’s work with the story ‘Room After Room’. When in London for his book tour last week, he signed the title page of that story. You can read an exclusive Granta interview with Foer here, in which he talks about his latest book, Eating Animals, which has rocked the literary and meat-eating worlds.

To enter for your chance to buy the issue

Email James Hollingsworth on jhollingsworth@granta.com, marking ‘JSF competition’ in the subject line and providing a phone number. Customer Services will contact the first entrant, who can then buy the book and receive the signed copy in the post.

The ‘Best of Young Novelists’ series have garnered much critical attention and acclaim in their own right, placing milestones in the literary landscape. The first instalment, ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ (1983), published work by A. N. Wilson, Martin Amis, William Boyd, Rose Tremain and Salman Rushdie. Graham Swift’s author biography modestly stated that he ‘writes by vocation and teaches by necessity’. You can browse the back list of our issues, all of which are still in print and on sale, here. Subscriptions to our digital archive are also available.

by George Murray

Click on the player below to listen to George Murray reading the poem

Pull the car over and take a moment
to note that this is where the road ends,
notwithstanding the memory of the path
continuing around the bend. The last
red taillights are painted over and the snow
presses its face up against the window,
begging to be let in. Turn the engine off,
it says, and hear this original soft
sound, a book of white nothing. I am life
without known rules: no signs, no lights, no lines
on the road; no ditches, asphalt, or curbs;
no people to see, no horizons or turns
to make; no destination. Draw aside.
Let your engine die and we'll compromise
temperature, colour, sound. I am life
where life heaves, turns and reads its final leaf.
Inside, the tick-tock of cooling machinery;
outside, the rattle ends this needless scenery.
If the road goes on without you, it goes blind.
Here, all is only static and knuckles cracking;
here you ease the tension ahead by waiting,
despite the chance of being hit from behind.

Ismail Dinda: Fashion manufacturer

I’m the last fashion manufacturer in the Faubourg St Denis. After I retire they’ll all be gone, and with them the skills. The Turks, the Greeks, the Yugoslavs who came here in the 70s had skills, we found jobs easily. Now that generation has retired and the new Chinese workers can only sew in a straight line, but fast. I hire people and I have to spend six months training them.

I worked for nothing for two years to learn my trade, in my home town of Fatsa on the Black Sea. If we did some alterations or sewed on buttons we could earn a few lira. And when you learned this trade you weren’t dealing with just anyone. My boss explained everything that exists in the world – history, politics, and the profession of tailoring.

Why did I come to France? Well, at school I took French lessons and I got nine out of ten. And I read a novel by Victor Hugo. In my head I had four windows and I looked all around the world, and decided that when I grew up I’d go to France.

To come to France you needed women’s tailoring. So I crossed over from men’s tailoring and learned it. When I returned from military service I opened a small boutique in Istanbul. One day a French tourist came into my boutique and saw some coats on a mannequin. She said, ‘You did this? Why don’t you come to France?’ And the door opened for me.

I worked for Madame Jacqueline and her mother for a year and a half, and at the end of the contract the boss died and we were left to fend for ourselves. I decided to set up a workshop at 3 rue Martel, Paris 10th. I’ve worked here ever since.

Ten years ago I employed seven people and now I’ve only got three. I don’t want to work like this but clients don’t pay on time. If money’s circulating you have the courage to hire more people and if it’s not you are afraid. I see the government like the father of the family, if it doesn’t get money how will it pay for hospitals, schools?

I know every aspect of the profession: pattern-cutting, cutting out, assembling, designing. This is why my clients ask me to do prototypes. If something doesn’t hang right, I know instinctively what to do. I’ll go to my cutting table with my perroquet and draw a new curve on the pattern. I do it by eye. When the garment is put together I hang it on the mannequin and there… I was right. I’ve done prototypes for Balmain, for Marie-Clemence maternity wear, and the ones I’m doing now are for children. My clients all come by word-of-mouth. I designed my daughter-in-law’s wedding dress, and sometimes I run up a pair of trousers for myself. A little larger each year, that’s how it goes.

I’ve been in these attic rooms for almost 40 years. My wife and I live in the flat below. We never need heating, the steam press keeps it warm. I’ve never redecorated the place. On the walls are fashion plates from Eva Negri, a client for 28 years, and a map of the world, a photograph of my brother who is a professor of cardiology in Istanbul, and a picture of Ataturk, the best of men. I also like De Gaulle, who came to Ankara when I was doing my military service. I listen to Turkish radio while I am working – music, news, and at the end of the day the music of the seraglio. This is a noble music from the time of the pashas.

In the evening I like to take a stroll. I’ve been here so long everyone knows me in the neighbourhood, but the French have gone, moved out to the suburbs. For me this is sad, because all I see is my compatriots. I would really like to see someone else, for example a Frenchman. But this quarter is very mixed, and that makes the quarter lively. It is the foreigners who bring their culture and their courage. It’s always better mixed. You see more poverty on the streets now, and while I might help an old person I won’t give money to a young person who could look for a job.

George has been sleeping in my workshop for 12 years. He’s from Gori, where Stalin was born. He came, he still hasn’t got work, he can’t pay rent, he hasn’t got money for food. He has got into the habit, he lives here, and there it is. But that is my idea, even in Turkey I’d do the same thing.

I grew up by the sea, and I swim 3km every Sunday in the public pools. Then in the summer, or when it’s Ramadan, I go back to Fatsa and swim in the sea there. I go back at least once a year. I’ve built a big house, 12 bedrooms, and we harvest the walnuts. It’s always a big party there, in the house, with the whole family coming from all over. I usually travel overland in my Volvo. It used to be me, my wife and my children but now they are grown up I take my cat, Minouche.

I planned to retire to Turkey, but now I don’t know. When you live in another country for 40 years and then return, you find almost nobody that you left behind. But if we stay here I would like to be naturalised. It’s late in the day, but why would we stay here as foreigners?

Click here to visit the page of the Work issue, with articles free to read online and other web exclusive content, including the rest of the ‘Working Lives’ series.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals, published in the UK this month by Hamish Hamilton, is an uncompromising tour of ‘factory farming’ practices in America, and the sick-making lengths that some companies have gone to drive up profits and satisfy a gigantic market. (A preface to the UK edition states that a ‘remarkably similar story’ could be told about practices there though – British readers should not rest easy.) Online Editor Ollie Brock caught up with Foer on his London book tour, to find out about this surprising new vocation for a novelist.

OB: With two hugely successful novels under your belt, what made you turn to non-fiction?

JSF: I did it because I felt compelled to do it. I’m not the kind of writer who has books he wants to fill or novels he wants to write… I find it very difficult to stumble on a subject that’s interesting. So when something comes along, I don’t question too much whether I should be doing it. Eating Animals was a product of that same following of my instincts and my curiosity.

The discussion around modern farming practices is already quite well developed. What did you feel you were adding to the debate?

A couple of things really. To my knowledge there isn’t a book that just deals with the bullseye of the target. Eric Schlosser sort of touches on it in Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan does it to a certain extent, but I don’t know if any book really gets the full scope of this. There has to be a sense in which writers always write the book they want to read… which implies that it hadn’t been written yet. This is the sort of book I wanted to read, wanted to have, regretted not having.

What do you mean by that?

Well there’s a lot of story-telling connected with this. It’s nostalgic, it reminds us of our families, it’s celebratory. We tell stories about what farming is, about what animals are… and the food production industry tells us stories about the where food comes from.

But you don’t feel that that’s any excuse, do you? You deconstruct the story-telling aspect as a ‘justification’ very effectively.

I don’t think it’s a very strong justification – I think it’s a justification we use. And that I use! Readily. For eating certain foods, and for doing other things… But sometimes the absence of those stories, or asking why we aren’t telling them, might be just as valuable. It might turn out that other stories bring us just as much happiness.

Your grandmother’s story of being a Holocaust survivor – for a long time living off scraps found on the ground; the chicken she was so proud to serve to her family – are very important to you. How has she reacted to your being vegetarian?

Well, she probably would prefer me to eat meat, but I don’t think she actually finds my vegetarianism puzzling at all. I was at her house not long ago, and I said to her, ‘Do you think animals feel pain?’ She gave me a look like I’d just asked her the dumbest question in the history of questions. And I had no idea what she was going to say. She said, ‘Of course they do!’ And of course they do! Would any reasonable person deny that? I think she respects the choice that I’ve made.

What was the singly worst practice you discovered in your research?

I think more shocking than any single instance was the rule. I mean, yes – I saw slaughter that wasn’t perfect; yes, I saw dead animals on farms; yes I saw animals that are so genetically modified – so bred – that they are physically incapable of walking. And that’s very sad, but I think to dwell on any instance is to ignore something much worse, which is, that this is it – this is our system. This is 99 percent or 93 percent of what’s available [in the US and UK respectively]. Animals as a rule are confined; as a rule, they are genetically modified. They are fed antibiotics, they have appendages removed without anaesthetic… Look, I’m not actually an animal lover! I’d be very surprised if I like animals any more than you do. I have no desire to pet a cow. I just think they should be treated like animals, that’s all – not like hunks of wood.

I do like animals, and I do pet a cow when I see one – but I also love eating them, and I think this goes for a lot of people. What is the reason for that contradiction, do you think? Why are we choosing to look the other way?

Well, my guess is that you just don’t think about it. It’s useful not to think about it, because it smells good and tastes good. And it’s what we ate yesterday, it’s what our parents ate. There’s an awful lot of inertia in our choices to eat meat. In fact, the ‘choice’ to eat meat really isn’t a choice. It’s the absence of a choice.

A lot of people are simply avoiding your book, for fear of becoming vegetarian, or for fear of too much guilt if they continue to look the other way. What does this say about our feelings on eating animals?

It’s just what people are like. It’s what I’m like! Life is just very complicated, and it’s difficult to be pulled in lots of different directions by persuasive humanitarian or ethical concerns. If I were to really think about it, is my time best spent giving an interview about my book, or should I devote my life to making sure there aren’t hungry people in my community? My only point is, we cannot remove any one of these ethical decisions from the context of our lives.

We just have loads of choices in front of us, and we try and make better ones. The whole conversation has been done a terrible disservice by the word ‘vegetarian’. People end up feeling like they can’t respond ultimately, hence the total rejection. But if you look at what it is we actually want, it’s a food production system that involves less destruction, less violence. Who would disagree with that?

But about the cause of that violence … You suggest in the book that the meat mass production business is what’s to blame. But you also write that ‘No one fired a pistol to start the race to the bottom. The earth just tilted and everyone slid into the hole.’ This refers to the economics of the situation, which you otherwise hardly talked about. Are the consumers or the corporations to blame? Or is it government regulations? Isn’t everyone just responding to a much larger, intractable system?

Well you can’t blame consumers for wanting to buy cheap products when they don’t know what those products are. Especially when the picture on the package is antithetical to the thing they’re actually buying. I think the government could do a much better job of regulating it, but so much of this happens out of sight. We still don’t know for sure what the effects of this are going to be. Women who drink factory-farmed milk are three times as likely to have twins as women who don’t; girls are going through puberty years earlier than they ever have before. Is there a direct link between the way we’re raising the animals and those facts? Probably, almost certainly – but we don’t know for sure.

What’s the outlook, though? You also suggest that a lot about this is inevitable. Do you think we’re just going to carry down the slippery slope?

There are reasons to be hopeful, there are reasons to be depressed. It’s depressing that people are eating more meat than ever before, and it’s depressing that China is slowly taking on the eating habits of America. It’s hopeful that 18 % of college students in America are vegetarian. And I imagine in five years or so, that those 18 % – a figure that’s growing every year – will become culture-makers, will become writers and journalists; they’ll become lawyers and politicians and nutritionists. The kind of people who are going to be guiding the conversation, I imagine, will be thinking about this quite differently.

You will have attracted a lot of activists to your cause. If you go back to writing fiction – which I hear you’re keen to do – will you be leaving them behind, a sort of Bob Dylan going electric?

Bob Dylan going Christian! Look, I’m not an activist. Despite appearances maybe, it’s not what I am and it’s not what I will be. There are going to be people who are much better than I am at pushing for necessary legislation, for pounding the pavements, for making sure that the conversation is sustained and broadened. I hope I contributed something to the mainstreaming of the conversation. At the end of the day, it’s a part of who I am, but it’s not who I am. And I can’t wait to get back to writing novels.

Jonathan Safran Foer was selected as one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young American Novelists’ issues, with his story ‘Room After Room’. Follow us on Twitter to be sure to hear about the competition to win a signed copy. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date with highlights of our online publication, news on the print magazine and events.

This interview was first run with a competition to win signed copies of Jess Row’s limited-edition short story collection, ‘The True Catastrophe’. The competition is now closed, but you can follow us on Twitter to make sure you hear about more of these.

Granta’s online editor Ollie Brock interviewed Jess Row about his writing, featuring in a ‘Best of Young Novelists’ collection, and his homegrown publishing project. He says that the real value of the short story has ‘barely begun to be explored by writers and critics’...

OB: You were named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists in 2007, along with Jonathan Safran Foer, Yiyun Li and Gary Shteyngart. Where were you in your writing career at the time, and how did this affect it?

JR: My first book, The Train to Lo Wu, came out in 2005 – so by the time the Granta award came around I was immersed in a new collection of stories (a few of which appear in The True Catastrophe) and a novel. Those projects are still under way. The award itself was just a wonderful honour. I was especially proud to be among such a varied cadre of writers whose work is both American and – an overused word – ‘global’ in spirit.

I’ve noticed quite a dark, violent streak running through your work. The story featured in Granta’s 2007 ‘Best of Young American Novelists’ describes a college-student-turned-jihadi; one of the stories in your new collection The True Catastrophe is about two girls killed in a lift shaft, and a death in 9/11; another tells of a horrific conceptual art stunt that reminded me of Teddy Giles in Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved. Do you mind my asking what is behind these preoccupations?

I think what I’m most drawn to in writing about this subject is the way in which very small, intimate acts of violence (not even necessarily physical violence) often serve as a microcosm or incubator for the massive, cataclysmic violence we see all around us in the world. All of the stories you mention have to do with characters who seek out that connection or who feel it forming inside them in some way.

The story collection is from your very own Suture Press: beautifully bound books in uncoated paper covers, with elegant typefaces, produced in strictly limited numbers. Can you tell me a little about this new project?

In the last few years I’ve been going to the Bookfair at the Associated Writing Programs conference and seeing waves and waves of new small presses appearing. Many of them are producing books – or book-like objects – that look and feel ‘handmade’, whether they’re letter-pressed, stamped, hand-numbered (as ours are) or what have you. And I've been really inspired by this return to a more intimate and idiosyncratic way of publishing and distributing literature. When I was in high school and involved in the underground/hardcore/punk music scene, most of what I read and listened to was produced in this way, so in a way the value of independence – the ‘DIY’ ethic – was inculcated in me from an early age. Add to that that my wife and co-editor, Sonya Posmentier, has had a long-term interest in book arts and bookmaking, and you have Suture Press. I chose the word ‘Suture’ because it comes from an Indo-European root that means both ‘to sew or bind’ and (in Sanskrit) ‘a book’, i.e. a ‘sutra’, like the Yoga Sutra or the Kama Sutra.

The particular project that we're starting with this chapbook, the New Series, is a series of chapbooks that simply celebrates the diversity of the contemporary American short story. I wanted to create something that readers can collect and cherish, and that preserves an intimate feeling of literally coming from the hands of the author.

You seem to favour the short story as a form. García Márquez said that writing each short story is just as hard as writing a novel – do you agree? Do you think it could be the most appropriate form in our time-starved, information-soaked era?

I think it could be the most appropriate form, and I wish it was, but honestly I don’t think that the short story will ever attract as many readers as the novel. The novel is an immersive form, and I think many readers turn to literature for that sense of immersion, taking comfort in an alternate universe that lasts for a while. (This, I think, explains the lasting popularity of nineteenth-century novels in particular). Of course, the short story does have a devoted and loyal readership – it’s just a rather small one. And mainstream publishers have always had a difficult time reaching that audience in a sustainable, economical way. Perhaps this is changing with the advent of electronic publishing – who knows?

One problem, as I see it, is that the short story isn’t taken very seriously as an art form in its own right. We don’t honour the short story’s distinctiveness as, say, the string quartet is honoured as distinct from the symphony, or drawing is as distinct from painting. Regarding what García Márquez says – it may be true, in some cases, but I don’t think that it's profitable always to compare stories to novels. The values the short story embraces – economy, brevity or ‘quickness’, compression, miniaturization, density, stasis – have barely begun to be explored by writers and critics. Perhaps if the short story were appreciated on its own terms, it would have more cultural cachet and thus a wider audience.

The hills along the coastal road south from Beirut are blemished by ugly highrises and concrete blocks abandoned mid-construction, so as I negotiate the lawlessness of the highway, I prefer to glance at the banana plantations and the blindingly blue sea to my right. On this particular morning, the heat and humidity filled the car despite the air conditioning, and my dress was already creased. As soon as I turned off the coastal road at Damour, I began the climb into the Chouf mountains.

The heat became increasingly dry and the air cleaner as I circled green mountains and pine valleys. Most of the villages along the way are modest but others are clearly prosperous. Deir el Qamar, for example, the seat of local governors from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, is beautifully restored. It was Prince Fakhreddine II of Mount Lebanon who first moved his capital here and grew so powerful that the Ottoman sultan eventually had him killed. Although now in the heartland of the Druze community, historically it had a mixed population of Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Deir el Qamar could stand as a microcosm of the country, with its eighteen different religious sects, many of which have coexisted for centuries. The Chouf has traditionally been inhabited by Druze and Christians, who retreated into this mountainous region for self-protection long ago. The Druze are perhaps the most intriguing of the religious minorities in Lebanon, both because of their closely-guarded spiritual beliefs, which are accessible only to the initiated, and thanks to their long-standing reputation of being close-knit and fierce fighters. Walid Jumblatt, the current Druze leader and head of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), consolidated his power in the Chouf during the 1975-90 civil war and has made his main home here. One of the most politically canny and charismatic politicians in Lebanon today, he represents a fascinating form of feudalism that persists in a modern, democratic country. I was on my way to see him after his recent controversial announcement that he had withdrawn from the pro-West ‘March 14’ governmental alliance.

Rounding the head of the Chouf’s main valley, I passed Beiteddine, Lebanon’s most magnificent palace built by local Prince Bashir II, and a little further up the mountain, I came at last to Moukhtara, the home of Lebanon’s Druze leader. I couldn’t see much from the road, but the entrance to my destination was recognizable by the crowds of cars and people. After parking the car, a muscular guard holding a Kalashnikov let me by with an unexpectedly friendly greeting. Ushered through the gates and security check, I continued up the incline until I found myself at the foot of a towering nineteenth-century palace.

Climbing the old stone stairs to one of the main gates, I became increasingly aware of the palace’s architectural beauty and the stunning mountain views it offered. Parked at the bottom of an elegant double stairway leading to another entrance, probably the residential quarter, was a silver and black Harley Davidson: a sleek, modern machine gleaming brightly in this historical and mountainous haven.

In the main courtyard of the faultlessly restored chateau, locals, visitors and semi-official men stood about. Entering through the first doorway, I emerged into an informal majlis or sitting room, where, surrounded by men and visiting supplicants, I found my host. Tall and skinny, with his extraordinary trademark hairstyle, and wearing jeans and navy blazer, he looked and carried himself more like a Sorbonne professor than a warlord.

At Moukhtara, Walid Jumblatt regularly holds court, opening the doors of his palace to members of his community who come to discuss problems and ask for favours. Jumblatt has been called many things: Lebanon’s political weather vane whose manoeuvering reveals the current state of local, regional or international politics; a well-read figure whose quasi-philosophical political statements inspire flurries of media speculation; a cunning practitioner of realpolitik whose shifting allegiances ensured his survival and the protection of the minority Druze community throughout the Lebanese civil war and since. He is probably all these. But for me, his role as a modern feudal lord explains a lot about his politics.

With his sharp eye, he quickly spotted me and interrupted his consultations to greet and lead me into an anteroom before his private study. Here, pre-colonial maps of the Middle East hang on the walls, alongside a large, framed photograph of his father Kamal Jumblatt, one of the defining figures of twentieth-century Middle Eastern politics. An intellectual politician who studied extensively in Beirut and at the Sorbonne, Jumblatt Senior founded the PSP in 1949, led a major uprising in 1958, united the leftist parties with a secularist, pan-Arab ideology, and supported the Palestinian nationalist movement. In 1977 he was killed by a carbomb – assassinated like his own father before him.

Only two days after I had first spoken to Walid Jumblatt on the telephone, he had declared his withdrawal from the March 14 bloc, a sudden move that arguably spelled its demise, and had spent the previous several days fielding criticism for this move. The March 14 bloc is a Sunni, Christian and Druze alliance that arose after the assassination of the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was responsible for most of Lebanon’s reconstruction since the 1975-91 civil war. The assassination led nearly a quarter of the Lebanese population into the streets on March 14 2005, in the largest peaceful demonstration the country had ever seen. The people demanded an investigation into Hariri’s death and the departure of Syria’s military presence from Lebanon. Washington neo-cons seized on this genuinely hope-filled ‘Cedar Revolution’, and Damascus was pressured into withdrawing its troops, which had been present in Lebanon since 1976. Jumblatt was at the forefront of the movement.

Hezbollah, which represents the majority of the Shi’a population and is supported by Syria and Iran, together with its Christian allies led by Michel Aoun, became the official Opposition to the pro-West March 14 government bloc. The neo-cons, unsurprisingly, proved themselves to be treacherous allies when they gave Israel the green light to bomb Lebanon in July 2006, hoping to get rid of Hezbollah once and for all. But the near-continuous bombing that lasted 34 days led to the destruction of the country’s infrastructure (airport, roads, bridges, power station), environmental disasters and over a thousand civilian deaths. Hezbollah, meanwhile, only gained more supporters, mostly from among the Shi’a population who were most affected by the bombing.

Many admit that the March 14 government was disappointing. The Hezbollah-Israel war revealed its weakness. At the end of 2006, after a Shi’a cabinet walk-out over the Hariri tribunal, it was unable to appoint a president for eighteen months. The government’s limitations were again exposed when it tried to dismantle the Oppositions’ telecommunications network, triggering an attempted coup. Syria’s withdrawal had little impact on the everyday workings of Lebanese politics, however, which remained riddled by sectarian antagonisms, corruption and partisan allegiances to outside powers.

Despite differences of opinion on a number of issues within the March 14 bloc, Jumblatt’s announcement was nevertheless a shock. At Moukhtara, I suggested to him that he had dealt the alliance a fatal blow. His answer was succinct: ‘The demands of 14 March are accomplished. We have the mandate for the withdrawal of the Syrians and the Syrians got out. We’ve asked for a tribunal, we’ve got a tribunal. What else? Independence, liberty, freedom… And then what?’

I pressed him on the timing of his withdrawal – only two months after March 14 won the election. He cited the need for the protection by a greater Arab community, speaking of ‘good relations with Syria’ and ‘our cousins and relatives in Syria’, and emphasizing an Arab identity: ‘I feel much more secure when I stick to my Arabness. I am Druze but without Arabism there is no protection.’

This was a 180-degree turn from the man who had spoken out so daringly against Syria, and who had publically stated his fear that he might be assassinated – an understandable fear given his father’s fate and the contemporary wave of assassinations of prominent figures who had criticized Syria.

Of course, in earlier years and during much of the civil war, Jumblatt was Syria’s ally. And now, the Bush administration has gone and a thaw is taking place between Syria and the US. Jumblatt is at heart a pragmatist and seems to be responding to wider international changes as well as to local shifts. But he affirmed only that his main concern was how to solve ‘the biggest problem and injustice in the twentieth and twenty-first century, which is Palestine’. He reiterated his pro-Palestinian position and reclaimed his Arab identity, brushing off his previous stance as a mistake: ‘At one time I committed the error of going to the neo-conservatives […] Now I’m back to my origins, hamdulilah (thank God).’

It’s hard to trust the sincerity of this return to his leftist roots or, for that matter, of his earlier flirtation with the neo-cons. I put it to him that during his time as a March 14 leader, he had let down the Druze of Syria, who, as a vulnerable minority, may have been endangered by his provocative statements against Syria. He did not attempt to justify himself and, with a sigh, simply admitted that he had.

Perhaps sincerity is irrelevant for any Lebanese politician, let alone one as slippery as Jumblatt, since history so often seems to repeat itself in Lebanon: Israeli invasions, Syrian interventions, regional and international attempts to influence local actors, and a confessional political system that sees sons succeed fathers as leaders of the same, slightly updated political parties. Time curiously stands still in the midst of apparently dramatic changes, and it is perhaps Jumblatt’s philosophical bent, combined with the unflinching loyalty he receives from his community that make him a continued and potent actor on the political scene. In reality, many Druze were quietly horrified at his withdrawal from March 14, but the fact that they continued to support him ensured his lasting power and, in turn, their own protection.

Jumblatt certainly enjoys an idiosyncratically strong loyalty from his community. He is known as Walid ‘Beyk’, a title (originally military) conferred on the Jumblatts centuries ago. Among the people surrounding Jumblatt in Moukhtara during my visit, there was a woman with a baby in her arms, a foreign woman and her Lebanese husband, and several men waiting patiently to gain the leader’s ear. The supplicants come to ask for help with legal issues or land conflicts with neighbours, or to make requests on behalf of their children, who may need a scholarship or help in becoming officers in the army.

They sit or stand informally, but respectfully, in the reception room, where cushion-covered seating runs along all four walls, and in the outer courtyard, where they can lean against a traditional well or under an ancient Byzantine mosaic on the wall. The semi-official men who seemed to hang about aimlessly, talking in low tones, are modern ‘courtiers’ in charge of the various Druze educational and social institutions, so that particular requests may be followed up immediately. Most were wearing casual suits and shirts without ties, but a few had on the traditional Druze sherwal (baggy black trousers) and white skullcap.

Not all those who make the trip to Moukhtara are Druze, since there are many Christians and some Sunni and Shi’a Muslims who live among Druze communities and whose interests are also partly represented by Jumblatt. Full of nervous energy, the Beyk doesn’t sit still for very long and is given to checking his mobile phone while people whisper their requests. He makes impatient noises or raises his voice when someone comes along with a banal problem, such as a collapsed garden wall. A white hunting dog dozes by his side throughout these consultations and then follows him from room to room.

This cosy feudalism initially seems at odds with Jumblatt’s pragmatic politics, but it is even more strange when one considers his modern, cosmopolitan outlook. For instance, he founded the annual international Beiteddine music festival during the civil war, and his wife Noura is a keen patron of the arts. A wine enthusiast, he is the majority shareholder in Chateau Kefraya, Lebanon’s second largest winery, and he adores Harley Davidsons. He is also said to enjoy a party. Most significantly, as president of the Chouf Cedar Reserve committee, Jumblatt has helped save the Lebanese cedar tree and countless endangered animal and plant species, and has created the largest nature reserve in the country. His concern for the environment has spread throughout the area: on my drive up to Moukhtara, I was struck by the spotlessness of the landscape. There is no litter here as there is all along the coastal road, and the detritus of building developments that seem to be ubiquitous in the country are a distant memory.

And yet, the feudalism is not really so odd. It is a logical extension of the Lebanese confessional system that distributes political positions according to sect and therefore permits the persistence of a traditional feudalism in the modern form of political clientelism. The Prime Minister must be Sunni, the President a Maronite Christian, the Speaker of the House a Shi’a Muslim, and so on, more or less, among the eighteen official sects.

Druzism is a philosophical offshoot of Shi’a Islam (Ismailism, to be precise) and is influenced by Sufism. Its esoteric nature kept it secret from all but the initiated, partly for the protection of the community. I asked Sami Makarem, professor of Arabic Literature, Islamic Thought and Sufism at the American University of Beirut, to explain the strong feudal allegiance the Druze continue to offer their leader. For Makarem, the Druze are historically a military people: they descend from the Tanukhids, who came from the Aleppo region to Lebanon in 1017 because the Abbasid authority wanted them to defend the Lebanese coast from the Byzantines. The Tanukhids embraced Ismaili Shi’ism and then Druzism, and continued to defend the Lebanese coast and Beqaa valley for the following five centuries under the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk dynasties. Their military past explains the way in which their leader became both a military and a political figure. The importance of land accompanies this type of military loyalty, particularly as the Druze were granted feudal fiefdoms by the caliphates and local empires they defended. Interestingly, the Druze are today the only Arabs allowed to join the Israeli army, part of Israel’s ‘divide and rule’ policy over the Palestinian population. But in most of the region, the Druze have been strongly associated with anti-colonialism and nationalism.

Jumblatt’s current political about-turns may be viewed cynically, but they are effective because of his community’s support, and the return to his leftist roots is not so much ideological as simply a question of security and self-protection. ‘I feel safer as part of a bigger group’, he says. He believes that there used to be ‘a more effective left’ in the Middle East during his father’s era, but that now, in the age of globalization, there is no alternative but to be pragmatic.

So what is Jumblatt confronting now? His own explanation that March 14 achieved what it had set out to do is certainly true. The alliance did not, as was hoped, lead to a more profound unification of the nation. There remained differences in opinion among the allies, and the division between March 14 and the opposition was further cemented. This was apparent even after March 14’s election victory when it took months to form a cabinet. Jumblatt has local concerns, to be sure, including jockeying for important cabinet seats and achieving neutrality in any potential Sunni-Shi’a rift within Lebanon. But his manoeuvering is also a response to the wider regional and international situation, which he was the first to understand. With the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the stated intention to prevent further Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, the Obama administration at least appears to have a different approach towards the Middle East. It is also bringing Syria into the international fold, loosening her strategic alliance with Iran. Recent meetings between Saudi king Abdullah and Syrian president Assad signal a healing of their rift and a possible regional configuration that sees a Saudi-Syria understanding to counterbalance Iran. Jumblatt, in response, is reconfiguring his own position in order to ensure his survival in the new world order.

For Jumblatt, ‘there is no Lebanese nation’: for as long as the ‘old-fashioned, outdated’ sectarian system remains in place, he believes, people will function in a sectarian and feudal fashion. So, for the time being, he can only be pragmatic, remain at the head of his community, and attend to situations as they arise. It is a grim worldview, but one that is at least more plausible than either the overblown rhetoric of the religious parties or the wishful idea that Lebanon can rely on the West to sort things out. Intelligent, unpredictable, occasionally ruthless, Jumblatt shows that he is still very much in the game.

He also continues to maintain a balancing act. While contending to be a player in national politics, he must simultaneously represent the Druze community effectively enough to preserve his position as their leader, and also respond to the politics of external powers who are always nearby and ready to meddle in a small, weak Lebanon. Although many condemned his abandonment of March 14, many others, certain at least of his survival instinct, wondered what he knew or foresaw that they didn’t.

Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer

My first perception of Borges is Borges himself. In other words: I see Borges. Let me explain. I must be nine or ten and I’m walking my uncle, who’s in his twenties, along the pedestrian Calle Florida in Buenos Aires. I say that I’m walking my uncle because my uncle is blind. My uncle hoped to become a great painter. During his adolescence he’d won important scholarships and prizes, but he went blind from juvenile diabetes, and at this point – he doesn’t know it, but he senses it – he has two or three or four years left to live. So we’re walking and suddenly someone says, ‘There’s Borges,’ and I look and I see Borges and I say to my uncle, ‘There’s Borges.’ Borges is coming toward us and he, too, is on the arm of a friend or a fan and then my blind uncle – who was the humorous type, wickedly funny – shouts ‘Borges! How are you? You look great.’ And Borges turns his unseeing gaze on the precise spot from which the voice of my blind uncle issues and reaches him and the two of them look at each other without seeing each other, and there I am, in between, unable to believe what I’m seeing.

At the time, I hadn’t read Borges, but, like most Argentinians, I knew perfectly well who Borges was. It was easy to run into him on the street, near the Plaza San Martín. Borges was a constant presence on television, where he was the subject of many long interviews, often around the date of the Nobel Prize ceremony, and even on sketch comedy shows where the comedians imitated Borges because Borges was inimitable and unique. What did his imitators respectfully poke fun at? His voice, his manner of speaking, his haughty modesty, his almost psychotic erudition, and the polite but pointed way that he was always undermining his interlocutors. I also knew who Borges was because my father – a graphic designer who had already done a book based on the story ‘House Taken Over’ by Julio Cortázar – was at the time putting together another book whose title was Bio-autobiografía de Jorge Luis Borges and whose premise was decidedly Borgesian. What my father had done was to clip and shuffle many passages from the short story collection A Universal History of Infamy and – with plenty of graphic material on the writer and his times – ‘assemble’ a biography of Borges that didn’t depart from reality but at the same time reshaped it and rewrote it, without changing a thing. So my house was full of photographs of Borges. They were everywhere. Cut-and-paste Borges, and, if I remember right, more than once I cut out little Borgeses for my father. Borges trading cards, to fill an album. Borges, when he found out about the project, sent my father a message. ‘Infamy isn’t me,’ my father said Borges said.

A few years later, far from Calle Florida, with no chance of seeing Borges again for a long time, in Caracas, Venezuela, a fugitive along with my parents, I read my first book by Borges.

The first book by Borges that I read was A Universal History of Infamy. In the Alianza Editorial paperback edition with a magnificent cover by the underappreciated but forever brilliant Daniel Gil. I remember the cover. A blurred and sketchy face upon which floats a glass eye in an allusion to the story ‘Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv’. I like to think that I read that Borges and every other Borges in the Alianza collection in the same way that Borges read the Thousand and One Nights, Stevenson, Chesterton, Poe, and Wells. In other words: that I read Borges as if he were a children’s book writer, in the noblest sense of the term, as a formative and foundational writer, as a spinner of perfect yarns, as one of those storytellers who open the door for us to play in other books, and – I’ve said this many times – it never exactly surprises me but always makes me happy, the way books open like doors. Maybe because of that – and here comes a confession that many will consider scandalous – I never went back to read Borges. It isn’t that I never read him. I reread a few stories several times, I looked up an exact quote, I made sure to read the few new books that came out over the years and that ceased with the almost-end of my adolescence (which, say what you like, stretches to the age of twenty-nine).

Borges had said ‘when I was young I always wanted to be invisible,’ and I – just twenty-one, suddenly of age, legal – aspired to the most pious invisibility of wanting to become a writer. I got along very badly with my then-girlfriend. My then-girlfriend – who isn’t my wife now, in case you were wondering – was always telling me that she ‘couldn’t see me’. In other words, I was ‘invisible’ to her. And we fought a lot, too much. And I was invisible, but I hadn’t lost physical substance. And that was how my real collision with literature came about: one day my girlfriend slapped me in the street and went running. It was our 500th fight. She slapped me and went running down the passageways of the Galería del Este and I went running after her, along Calle Maipú. I had to catch up with her so we could start fight number 501. Upon turning a corner (my girlfriend ran fast, she was already a long way ahead; she belonged to a gym, did aerobics, was in much better shape than me) I barreled into a lightweight old man. The man flew through the air, clutching his stick and uttering choked little cries. He fell face up and then I discovered that the man was Borges and that I, maybe, had killed Borges.

Was this the most significant moment of my life so far? Who knew if this collision with great literature would be the trigger of other stories, or the Fukuyama-esque end of my history as a writer – because what would be the point of writing anything if I went down in history as the person who killed Borges? Luckily for me, Borges was alive. I saw Borges, on his back, the stick across his chest, opening and closing his mouth like one of those canaries sent down into the bowels of coal mines to detect a lack of oxygen. It was poetic justice, I think: the plot that brought together two invisible men who managed to meet, and, upon not seeing each other, collide. That was my great run-in with literature and it bothers me a little not to be able to remember – no matter how hard I try – whether I helped him up or not. I don’t think I did. And enough of this story, because I’ve told it so many times. Because by now it’s like the ace in my sleeve or the king in the collar of a stand-up comedian who, to top it all off, hasn’t even bothered to reread Borges.

And it was very easy for me not to reread Borges because – for complex reasons that are beside the point – I was deprived of the academic obligation to return to him. This means, too, that I didn’t receive the order to read the many essays on Borges that take his name in vain, the countless and often demented theories that ascribe absolutely everything or nothing to him; and that – when I sat down to read about Borges – I did it not out of a need to take him apart and later reconstruct him before a panel of examiners, or for an inevitable theoretical plan for how to proceed with my work, but for the pure pleasure of enjoying a great character.

And at this point I also come to the key of my very personal (some wouldn’t hesitate to call it ‘primal’ or ‘savant’) relationship with Borges. I remember, too, the personal Big Bang I experienced when, on a tropical morning, probably rainy (one always remembers oneself reading while it’s raining), I first read that brief page from The Maker titled ‘Borges and Me’, in which Borges, for the first but not the last time, shows himself to be so definitively Borgesian and blurs the line between author and character and – at least so it seemed to me – also muddles the identity of the reader. Because if in it Borges confesses ‘I don’t know which of the two of us is writing this page,’ then how could one be sure that a spore of Borges wouldn’t detach itself from the paper and infect the reader and – a second ‘and me’ – that the reader wouldn’t suddenly also be Borges? The person to whom things happen or who writes them down or both? It doesn’t matter. What I felt then was that not only could one make a living from literature but one could live literature, and literature could live in and off the writer. Because, Borges, for me, always is and will be the Great Writer who understands writers as great characters and as great readers. Borges as the Reader-Writer, who, in my view, with his manner of being, defines a hypothetical and elusive Argentinian literary tradition. This is a tradition that passes for the idea of the betrayal of tradition – roots that don’t burrow into soil but into the wall against which the books are shelved. The wall that throbs with the cosmic virus of the silent and slow but constant invasion from Tlön. The wall that houses the genius of a librarian, blind and polymorphic and perverse, who recommends so many things all at once and who’s convinced that salvation and paradise will always live inside a book. Inside a book that contains the whole universe.

To read Rodrigo Fresán’s last piece of memoir for granta.com, ‘Notes Toward the Memoirs of a Book Thief’, click here

An extract of Jim Crace’s novel, All That Follows, appeared in our latest issue, Granta 109. The novel will be published in April – by Picador in the UK and Nan A. Talese/Doubleday in the USA. It will also be published in Italy by Guanda, and by Aleph in Spain. You can buy a copy of Granta 109 here.

Click inside the window to watch this interview with Ellah Allfrey, in which Jim Crace discusses the novel, and his method of writing more generally. He reveals that rather than beginning with a setting or character, he starts with an idea, or a question he wants answered: ‘I just wade in and see what happens.’ In All That Follows, this idea was ‘political timidity’ and the question was whether ‘timid bourgeois liberalism’ is preferable to violent political action.

He also explains why he will only be writing one more book, a novel about consciousness, which will be his ‘most ecstatic, most poetic yet’.

Click here to see a full list of our exclusive interviews, with writers including Peter Carey, Daniel Alarcón and Paul Auster, and the musician Natalie Merchant.

The conclusion of an essay by journalist and author Jeremy Seabrook, in which he pictures his nineteenth-century self that would have been; he also traces the end of the industrial era and the role he fears he played in it.

To read Part I, click here.

Part II

In the mid-nineteenth century I would have been a ranting cobbler-preacher, attracting a small crowd of devout believers to some extreme dissenting sect in a cold red-brick chapel in a slum area abandoned even by the Primitive Methodists. I would have worked at home, collecting the uppers from shop, and working at a bench in the kitchen of rented rooms. I would despise the work I was doing – bespoke dancing pumps for the daughters of a local manufacturer to waltz their way through the night in the new crystal conservatory their father had constructed as an annexe to his substantial villa on the edge of town. Unlike my fellow workers – who usually earned their week’s wage by working ceaselessly for three days and nights and then going on the booze for the rest of the week – my weekly labour finished, I would open my Bible or my copy of Bunyan, read by a farthing rushlight and lose myself in visions of the better world that was, and was not, this one.

My wife would disturb me in the early hours, wondering why I had not come to bed, and express her bitterness about the vagrancy of my mind, even though I never strayed physically far from the draughty tenement we occupied in Alliston gardens – one of the most shameful addresses in town, a sombre four-storey of rented rooms that still stood in the centre of Northampton until the 1960s. She would have reproached me for my lack of ambition, and worse, for failing to provide a half-decent life for my family. Goaded, I would, for a time at least, have abandoned my books and dedicated myself to work, so that we could afford one of the little houses being built on the eastern limit of town, called Upper Thrift Street. While I railed against the curse of riches and her perverse desire to return to the fleshpots of Egypt, she would tartly point out that she had seen nothing but the wilderness and had never known what it meant to eat bread to the full.

I would move the family into the new house, with its adjacent workshop; and in our new prosperity, I would have taken on an apprentice; a young man I had ‘rescued’ from the ‘burrows’, those courts and lanes of slum housing behind the town centre. Ostensibly to compensate for the absence of a son, the interest I took in him would have been far from fatherly, although it is unlikely that I would ever have become conscious of the nature of my attraction to him. He would have moved into the house as a lodger. I would have vested my hopes and dreams in him, and he, a not particularly skilled or conscientious boy, would have infuriated and enchanted me; I would indulge his idleness and lack of ambition, tolerate anything; until the day when I discovered, to the shame and dishonour of the family, my daughter was pregnant. Embittered and angry – and perhaps unconsciously jealous – I would have dismissed him from the house and from our lives. But that would not be the last of him. As soon as the child was born, I heard his voice in its crying and laughter; and this would accompany me to my grave. Through all this, I would have remained unaware of the ambiguity of my sexuality, buried, as it was, beneath radical proprieties of a world deaf to my thin and useless fulminations.

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This is the first part of an essay of non-fiction by author and journalist Jeremy Seabrook, the conclusion of which will be published here tomorrow. In Part I, we are transported back by one generation to visit the life the author would have lived, had he been born at a different time. Tomorrow, he takes us back into the nineteenth century, and his days as a ‘ranting cobbler-preacher’.

Part I

My mother’s cry rang in my ears from infancy. ‘No child of mine is going into a shoe factory.’ Similar heroics were heard throughout the land then, as parents declared their children ‘too good’ for the mill, the pit or the factory; such brave resolutions coincided with the closure of those sites of labour. My mother was no visionary, but she sensed that the employment from which she was preserving me was doomed. She wanted to take credit for the approaching extinction of the staple industry of our town, as though she had personally closed down the factories, solely to keep her children out of them.

A generation earlier, the main influence on my life would have been those same factories, which used to stand, squat, of blood-red brick, on almost every street corner: dusty windows, the glass of which was frosted, not to prevent passers-by from looking in, but to stop the attention of distracted employees from wandering outwards. Inside, heavy black machinery was served by the work of clickers, who cut the soles and uppers, skivers, makers, finishers, eyeletters; while fragments of discarded leather accumulated on the floor, in which insects and mice made their nests.

Life was marked by the regimented tramp of boots on the pavement in the early morning and again in the green winter dusk, the tang of leather that left its taste in the air, and even entered into food and drink. The work I would never do was tantalizing; and although I had no inclination to do it, it held a sombre seductive power, since in it I could clearly perceive the individual I was spared from becoming. If my mother conceived such a hatred for boot-factories, this was doubtless because her ten surviving siblings had been claimed by them; although this did not prevent them, for the most part, from becoming decent women and men, people who led lives of exemplary honesty and frugality.

My own early work consisted largely in recording the last gasp of their recollections of lives of labour. For years I haunted the slum houses where they had lived, watched as unfit buildings were razed; I re-animated the plain interiors, sketchy amenities and absent comforts with the obdurate, stingy and punishingly self-righteous boot and shoe workers. Surly, parochial and suspicious, they distrusted all orthodoxies. Three times they returned Charles Bradlaugh to parliament after he was expelled for refusing to swear the oath of allegiance on the New Testament; not because they were atheists, but because they thought his representation of them had nothing to do with his religious beliefs or lack of them.

The town of Northampton was a monument to their plain, conserving spirit. Some houses remained almost unaltered from the time of their construction, with little concession to ease or homeliness. Wooden chairs stood around the scrubbed table, a home-made rag-rug on the lino in front of the hearth, a chenille door-hanging danced in the draughts. A single brass faucet, discoloured by verdigris, sent a splashy cone of water into a shallow plaster sink. Coconut matting covered the red flags of the kitchen floor. In the sitting-room, a hard whipcord sofa, greasy from the pressure of arthritic hands; coal-smoke puthered into the room whenever the wind was in the wrong direction. The mantelpiece had a faintly ceremonial function: a clock, a wedding photograph, some brass candlesticks – emblems of a sacred domesticity. The bedrooms, too: austere penitential places, where the inside windowpane blossomed with frost in winter, and the ear of an enamel chamber-pot protruded from beneath beds high and hard, punitive altars for the sacrifice of human sexuality.

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Six times a year we will be showcasing original fiction from an emerging writer, as part of our New Voices project. We are proud to announce Kenyan writer Billy Kahora as our latest writer to be featured. Click here to see a full list of stories, and here to read more about Billy Kahora, including an interview.

That last Sunday of 2007, just a few days before Jimmy Gikonyo’s eighteenth birthday – when he would become ineligible to use his Nairobi Orphanage family pass – he went to see his old friend, Sebastian the gorilla. Jimmy sat silently on the bench next to the primate’s pit waiting for Sebastian to recognize him. After a few minutes, Sebastian turned his gaze on Jimmy and walked towards the fence. The gorilla’s eyes were rheumy, his movements slow and careful. Their interaction was now defined by that strange sense of inevitable nostalgia that death brings, even when the present has not yet slipped into the past.

Jimmy removed the tattered pass from his pocket and read the fine print on the back: This lifetime family pass is only for couples and children under eighteen years of age.

There was a sign on the side of Sebastian’s cage: ‘Oldest Gorilla in the World. Captured and Saved from the Near Extinction of His Species After the Genocide in Rwanda. Sebastian, 56. Genus: Gorilla.’

The Sunday Standard beside him said: Nairobi, Kisumu, Kakamega and Coast Province in Post-Election Violence After Presidential Results Announced.

That Sunday morning was strangely cold for late December. When Jimmy looked around, every one of the animals seemed to agree, each exhibiting a unique brand of irritation. 11 a.m. was the best time to visit the orphanage. The church-going crowd that came in droves in the afternoon was still worshipping, so the place was empty.

He had come here first as a toddler. They acquired their family pass in the days when his father was a trustee of the Friends of Nairobi National Park but his father soon found the trips boring, and for some years, Jimmy had come here alone with his mother.

When Jimmy was twelve his father left them, and Jimmy began to come on his own, except for the year he had been in and out of hospital. That year, he borrowed a book called Gorilla Adventure by Willard Price from a school friend. He had read it from cover to cover, in the night, using a torch under the blanket and eventually falling asleep. He woke up to find the book tangled and ruined in urine-stained sheets. He had received a beating from the owner that had only increased his love for the mountain gorilla. For the rest of his primary school years he would take the lonely side in arguments about whether a gorilla could rumble a tiger, or whether a polar bear could kill a mountain gorilla.

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Today Granta relaunches its project ‘New Voices’, in which we publish short fiction by exciting new writers; we will now be publishing an exclusive short story online six times a year. It is our chance to give these writers some of the recognition we feel they deserve, and to publish a few more of the many stories we receive - extending the space available in our print edition.

We are delighted to announce that our New Voice for February is Billy Kahora, whose story ‘The Gorilla’s Apprentice’ will go online tomorrow.

About Billy Kahora

Billy Kahora studied Creative Writing as a Chevening Scholar at the University of Edinburgh in 2007. Before that, he spent eight years studying and working in South Africa, and was Editorial Assistant for All Africa.com in Washington D.C. He also has degrees in journalism and media studies.

Kahora now lives and works in Kenya, where he is Managing Editor of the literary journal Kwani, established in Nairobi in 2003. He has called the publication ‘non-academic and non-institutionalised’. The writers and editors come from backgrounds of fiction and social commentary – and rather than coming from an already-established group, such as a university, want to create their own literary community.

Billy also edited ‘Kenya Burning’, a visual narrative of the post-election crisis in Kenya, published by the GoDown Arts Centre and Kwani Trust in March 2009. He is now collaborating on a book of non-fiction on environmental corruption in Kenya.

In an editorial for Kwani in 2005, entitled ‘The Fire Next Time OR A Half-Made Place: Between Tetra Paks and Plastic Bags’, Billy wrote:

‘All I might ask, starting with myself, is that my rhetoric, my theories, my musings – at least if I call myself a writer – can be seen between the pages of a book. That I am part of the defining texts of the here and now, and that they are written down and not just talked about. Because we really need them, as much as we need many other things, if we are to avoid, faint hope, the fire next time. And if we can’t avoid it – the moment has been defined for all to see.’

Interview

Granta’s Online Editor Ollie Brock spoke to Billy about his story ‘The Gorilla’s Apprentice’, his online journal Kwani, and the current state of literature in Africa. Read the interview here.

New Voices relaunch

Next week sees the relaunch of Granta’s New Voices project. New Voices is our space for promoting an exciting new fiction writer; we will be publishing a new exclusive short story online six times a year. There are no rules or restrictions on who we name as a New Voice – except that they write fiction, and are not widely known in that respect already. Click here to read all past stories.

Evie Wyld was our New Voice in May 2008; it was an extract from her novel After the Fire, A Still, Small Voice (Jonathan Cape, 2009), which won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize in 2009. Soumya Bhattacharya has had two books out since being featured in New Voices: All That You Can’t Leave Behind: Why We Can Never Do Without Cricket, and the novel If I Could Tell You, both published in India in 2009. We also published a story by academic and journalist writer Lana Asfour.

On Monday we will announce our New Voice for February, with an interview with the author – the story will follow on Tuesday.

Also

Listen to Ellah Allfrey’s interview with Martin Kimani as he talks about his Granta 109 essay ‘The Work of War’, on the BBC World Service’s ‘The Strand’ programme. You can read his article for free here.

Martin Kimani will also be speaking at the Travellers’ Tales Festival in Oxford next Saturday (20th February), in the New Voices in Travel Writing event, curated by Granta.

The recent earthquake in Haiti destroyed the house that writer Edwidge Danticat grew up in, and claimed the life of her cousin Maxo. She was interviewed shortly after the disaster by Democracy Now!, and has written a tribute to her cousin in the New Yorker.

Edwidge Danticat’s delicate and haunting story ‘The Revenant’ is set in Haiti immediately after the death of a child. You can read it in our archive here for free.

The story first appeared in Granta’s first ‘Best of Young American Novelists’ issue. Published in 1996, this was the first American instalment in this highly successful series, which includes three editions of ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ (1983, 1993, 2003), and a further ‘Best of Young American Novelists’ in 2007. You can buy any of these previously published issues of the magazine in our back catalogue. This autumn will see the first ‘Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists’, showcasing the best of new Spanish and Latin American fiction, in Granta 113.

Click here to donate to the British Red Cross’s relief mission.

Natalie Merchant is a singer and musician from New York, whose music has been praised for its lyrical, imagistic qualities – she incorporates the work of poets, both well-known and obscure, into her work. After a twelve-year spell with the band 10,000 Maniacs, Merchant launched her solo career – from which she has recently taken a long absence after the birth of her first child, a daughter.

Her album ‘Leave Your Sleep’ will be released by Nonesuch Records this spring (its title is taken from a Mother Goose rhyme). She calls it ‘the most elaborate project I have ever completed or even imagined’: it touches on Cajun music, bluegrass, reggae, chamber music, folk and jazz, as well as folk styles from around the world. She has also used the work of e. e. cummings, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edward Lear and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

When in London last month, Natalie gave an exclusive interview with Granta’s deputy editor Ellah Allfrey. Click below to watch her speak about her favourite poets, children’s ‘emergence into the world of language’ and their first glimpses of mortality.

Click here for more content exclusive to granta.com, including video interviews, fiction, memoir and reportage.

I was running out of money and looking for work. In Union Square I bumped into a friend, and when I mentioned my predicament, he told me his cousin had just left her copy-editing job, and they had yet to find a replacement for her.

‘The pay’s not great and the place is supposed to be a little weird. But it’s something, right?’

I wasn’t a copy editor, but I couldn’t afford to be picky. I asked him for his cousin’s number.

The business was located in Chelsea, on the top floor of a plain building. When I stepped off the elevator the next afternoon, I was buzzed into a loft with large windows, high ceilings and a rash of cubicles sprouting like mushrooms from a hardwood floor. A woman in a mint-colored pantsuit was walking toward me.

‘Patrick, I’m Mindy Bouché,’ she said. ‘It’s so nice to meet you.’

She had Marfan syndrome, I thought. Her hands and neck and forehead were elongated in a way that suggested Abraham Lincoln. And, like Lincoln’s, her eyes rested in ashy, swollen bags of flesh. Her bracelets jingled when we shook hands. ‘Sorry about the cold, but it’s good for the computers.’

As we made our way through the cubicles, a few of the workers glanced at us over the tops of their partitions. ‘Where are you from?’

‘South Carolina. Lucien and I make quite a couple because he’s from Paris and I sound like a hillbilly.’

She turned on the lights in a conference room. A long, dark table stretched before us.

We sat down across from each other. ‘So,’ she said, ‘we just want to fill this position and get on with our lives. You’ve copy-edited before?’

‘I have,’ I said. And then I did that thing one does in an interview in the electronic age: I produced a hard-copy of the résumé I’d emailed the day before, as if it were the original, valuable artifact.

The document may as well have been a placemat between us – which was for the best, since I’d made up the company I claimed to have copy-edited for, along with the name and phone number of my fictitious ex-supervisor. ‘Can you start tomorrow?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And Debbie gave you a sense of what our company does?’

Debbie was my friend’s cousin; she hadn’t told me anything but Mindy’s email address. I nodded.

‘So you know there’s the stock, first and foremost,’ Mindy said. ‘We find the stock, and then we generate the story, and the emphasis is always on the story. I don’t know if you’re a fan of stories, but they’re crucial to what we do.’

‘I love stories,’ I said.

She placed her long hands flat on the table, then stood. ‘I guess I should go get Lucien, then. Your timing couldn’t be better, because he leaves tomorrow for a buying trip to China and I want him to meet you before you start.’ She walked out of the room.

I sat there beneath the humming florescent lights: be-suited, anointed. Employed. On the wall before me, anchored with thumb tacks, was a poster of a pretty blonde woman of about fifty, smiling a wry smile. Her image was photo-shopped against a purple background and surrounded by a constellation. Orion, I thought. Printed below her chin in cursive letters were the words, Athena sees good things for you.

‘Patrick!’

The voice was gravelly, like a belch. I looked up to see a corpulent man with bleached blonde hair and skin tanned the colour of peanut butter. He clutched a lit cigarette.

When I extended my hand, he pumped it vigorously.

‘You must be Lucien,’ I said.

‘I am! And I am wonderful now that I put my eyes on you!’ He sank into the chair at the head of the table and spread his legs wide. Mindy sat down next to him. ‘But I have to tell you, it has been a morning of bullshit. For the last hour, I have been on the phone with scum in Peking. You want me to pay five dollars apiece for a thousand Buddha statues as big as my thumb? Okay, and how about I fuck your mother in the ass while I pay you?’

I forced a smile.

Lucien burst into laughter. His face immediately reset itself. ‘Let me ask you something.’ He motioned with the cigarette toward the poster of Athena on the wall. ‘You are okay with all this?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you have met my passionate lover, Mindy. As opposed to my bitch of a wife.’

He was kidding, I thought; he and Mindy were married. Or he was serious and was cheating with her. I just wanted the job. ‘She’s captivating,’ I said.

‘Right answer!’ He glanced at Mindy. ‘I like him!’ Then he turned back to me and exhaled a plume of smoke. ‘And here is another question. Do you have a problem with astrology?’

I shook my head, then turned down my lower lip as if the notion of having a problem with astrology was silly. Absurd, even.

Lucien slapped his hand down over my kneecap, which I hadn’t realized was within his reach. ‘We have a deal, then,’ he said, squeezing it.

After he’d left the room, Mindy narrowed her eyes and looked at the hard copy of my résumé for the first time. I braced myself, fearing she was about to tell me she’d tried to call my made-up ex-supervisor. But she said, ‘One last question: How’s your HTML?’

At 8:55 the following morning, I was standing in the vestibule. Through the little window set into the door, I could see that the loft was empty and most of the lights were off. I tapped on the glass.

A minute later Mindy appeared, slouched and strolling across the far side of the room. She was dressed in another pantsuit – this one the colour of orange sherbet – and she had a plastic watering can in her hand. When I tapped the glass a second time, she straightened up to her full height, spotted me, and made her way across the floor.

‘Good morning,’ I said, after she’d unlocked the door.

‘Look at this place. Do you see anyone else here?’ she asked. ‘I don’t. They keep their own sweet time – work ethic is a rare commodity these days.’ She led me to one-fourth of a quad of cubicles in the center of the room. The desk surface bore a computer and enough coffee rings to make an Olympic flag. ‘This is you.’

Never, over the course of many different jobs, had I had a desk that was entirely my own. I sat down and ran my hands across the surface. My fingertips were crowned with dust.

Mindy walked off to tend to a nearly leafless ficus tree, and for the next half-hour, I sat there in the cold waiting to be given something to do. Eventually, I started investigating the drawers, which were empty save for a Snickers wrapper and two manuals: one for a program called Smartt Web Management, and the other for a program called HatInHand XG. I flipped through the HatInHand manual and gazed at screen-captures of drop-down menus, wondering if there was any coffee to be had.

A girl had slipped into the cubicle next to mine. A pair of large eyeglasses dominated her face, and a thick-knit sweater hugged her waist and rode high on her wrists. With a trembling hand, she fidgeted with her mouse and brought her computer screen to life.

I wiggled my own mouse. My computer screen remained dark. ‘Hi,’ I said.

She flinched. ‘Oh! Hi.’ For the instant that she looked at me, I thought she might be on the verge of tears. ‘Sorry – you’re new here, right?’

Before I could answer, her eyes were already back on her screen. She clicked icon after icon, opening multiple programs.

‘First day,’ I said. ‘I’m Patrick.’

Her head bobbed up and down in profile. ‘Kim.’

‘Hi, Kim. Are you a copy editor too?’

‘Sort of. Not really. It’s more…’ She trailed off, absorbed by her work.

Before long, her phone rang.

‘Good morning, Jesse,’ she said into the receiver. ‘I know, I…I will, I…okay, I’ll call you when it’s done, okay? Okay.’

She hung up and clicked more rapidly.

‘Who’s Jesse?’ I asked, thinking I ought to show a little initiative.

‘This woman in Nyak? She sort of manages the – well, it’s this fulfillment company we use. She can be a little…short-tempered.’

‘I see. And what does the company do? This one, I mean.’

She let out a breathy, mirthless laugh, said, ‘We sell things,’ and offered nothing more.

I got up and went looking for the kitchen.

I found it past a long row of bookshelves crammed with books about Christianity and the solar system, world history and the power of gem stones. Most of my co-workers had trickled in by now and were wandering about, sniffling and nodding good morning to one another. At the sink was a shrunken woman with a muffler wrapped around her neck. Next to her stood a bald man with a lantern jaw and a neatly-trimmed van dyke. His arms were folded across his chest as he stared at the coffee maker.

‘Morning,’ I said.

‘Hello.’

‘Are we still on Saint Xavier?’ the shrunken woman asked without turning around.

‘No,’ the man said. ‘I handed that in before I left on Friday. Now we’re on to the Mosaic of Prosperity.’

I wanted to hear a hint of sarcasm in his voice, but there was none.

‘Is the coffee ready?’ I asked.

‘Takes an eternity,’ he muttered as if sharing a trade secret.

Back at my desk, someone tapped my shoulder. I looked up to see Mindy towering over me. ‘How are things working out?’

‘Just fine,’ I said. ‘So will I be copy-editing web content?’

‘Kim will get you up to speed on HatInHand and Smartt Web. You should have that down as soon as possible. And you’ll need this.’ She handed me an astrological wall calendar. ‘It has all the moon phases, and they have to be correct in what we send out. Our credibility’s on the line when it comes to the moon.’

I was about to ask why when she clapped her hands, looked about the loft, and announced, ‘Ten minutes to Mollyglow, people!’

‘Jesus Christ,’ someone said.

‘Well, what’s the surprise?’ Mindy asked in the direction of the voice. ‘If you don’t like it, you can get here on time tomorrow and be ready, for a change.’

She walked off.

Kim blew her nose.

‘So you’re training me?’

‘I guess,’ she said. ‘I mean, your job is mine, basically. That’s how Debbie and I had it.’

And exactly what the fuck goes on here? I wanted to ask. Instead, I asked, ‘What’s Mollyglow?’

‘One of our websites. It gets updated every twenty-four hours.’

Had my computer been working, I might have gone to the site for some answers. I was mashing the reboot button when a woman across the way stood up from her desk, crossed over to mine, and held out a Jolly Rancher.

I took it and thanked her.

‘I heard about you. You’re a writer,’ she said in a voice just above a whisper. Her accent was German, I thought.

I hadn’t told my friend’s cousin I was a writer. ‘When I’m not here,’ I said.

‘I dance.’ She pointed at Kim. ‘She’s a writer. And Zach used to be a writer. And Sally’s a sculptor who says she’s can’t sculpt anymore. This place is fucked up, yeah?’

‘Well, I just started.’

‘You think it’s you for a while. But then you realize, wow, it’s this place. It’s a nuthouse and you have to accept that or go out of your mind.’

I sensed a comrade. Darting my eyes left and right, I unwrapped the Jolly Rancher and slipped it into my mouth. ‘What’s with the coffee?’ I asked.

‘It’s like piss. That’s this place: piss and shit.’

‘I’m Patrick.’

‘Inga.’ We shook hands.

Mindy’s voice launched like a cool dart through the air. ‘Two minutes, people! Mollyglow!’

‘Piss and shit,’ Inga muttered, and then wandered back to her desk.

For the next hour, I watched everyone – save for the bald man and the shrunken woman – scamper about in a panic, trying to fix several icons and something called a drop page. They tested and retested it. They got on the phone with a person named Louise, and Louise’s people ran some sort of diagnostic; each time, the results were unsatisfactory.

I went to lunch. When I came back, the crisis had been resolved; everyone was back in his or her cubicle and the only sound was the steady clicking of keys. I looked around for Inga, then asked Kim if there was any copy-editing to be done.

She looked embarrassed. She rubbed her chin for a moment, then took a folder from the metal rack next to her monitor and pulled out a few stapled pages. ‘I guess you could look at these if you want to.’

Dear X1, the first document began, On X2, as X3 moves into X4, I want you to turn X5 years into golden wealth.

I felt like I was looking at an SAT problem. But then Kim said, ‘Oh – not that one. Read one with the fields filled in; it’ll make more sense.’ She took the top document back and replaced it with another.

Dear Betty, this new document read, On December 17th, as Pluto moves into Capricorn, I want you to turn 53 years into golden wealth.

I’ve been studying your horoscope, Betty, and when I trace back from 1956 to 53 years later, I see a person whose too timid to make their dreams come true. But as a child, I know you created SPECIAL dreams that you still carry with you.

The document was a train wreck. I set to work fixing all the mistakes I found. Not far along was a picture of something called a ‘Golden Galaxy’ – a cheap-looking medallion on a chain. The medallion, glittery and stamped with a central white dot, was described as 14k Gold Plate Over Sterling Silver with a Mother of Pearl Eye and Enamored with Diamond-Glow Cubic Zirconia.

This brilliant treasure is designed after the shape of the galaxy – our Source of Life! – and not only that. It is a sincere reminder that the RICHES and GOOD FORTUNE you deserve are coming your way! Imagine, Betty, 53 years of fortune being spun with galaxial force into PURE FINANCIAL REALIZATION!

I didn’t have a dictionary but was pretty certain ‘galaxial’ wasn’t a word; I circled it and wrote ‘sp?’ in the margin. Gold had obvious value, the document reminded Betty; silver was the protective healing choice of the Ancients. And then, following a JPEG of Athena’s signature, Betty herself was speaking.

Yes, Athena! I understand that the Golden Galaxy is sacred to my birthday, December 17th.

Yes! I realize that this amazing piece will enrich my life, and I am looking forward to my RISK-FREE guarantee, and also THREE GIFTS – mine to keep if I return the pendant. (The gifts, I noticed – an authenticity certificate, a black velvet case and a laminated card detailing the activation ceremony that would unlock the pendant’s powers – were useless without the pendant.)

I’m so happy you’re making this choice, the text read, apparently slipping back into Athena’s voice. CLICK HERE!

Poor Betty.

The second document detailed three specific dates that would bring Betty wealth throughout the year, activated only by a pearl-studded pendant bearing the face of the Archangel Michael, known to lift the poor from suffering and shower them with riches. The third described a scarab bracelet that would heal all of Betty’s financial sorrows.

‘Do you want to take a look at these?’ I asked, re-stacking the documents and holding them out for Kim.

She took them from me, blinking with confusion. ‘You marked them?’

‘I copy-edited them,’ I said.

She was shaking her head and showing as much interest in my edits as Mindy had in my résumé. ‘We’ve been sending these out like they are for a year or so,’ she said as she tucked them back into the metal rack.

‘Between us,’ I said, lowering my voice, ‘is Athena real?’

‘Um,’ she said, and cleared her throat.

Mindy’s clapping broke the air. ‘Upsales, people! Ten minutes!’

Someone announced that the drop page on the Miracle of St. Bernadette Broche wasn’t working properly.

‘Well, fix it,’ Mindy said. ‘And fast.’

‘Upsales?’ I asked Kim.

‘Everything’s first in a series. Like a series of pendants or medallions or whatever. Upsales are when we write back and tell them the first one can’t really work without the second one. Which won’t work without the third.’

The next day, I arrived once again before everyone but Mindy, and I tried to take advantage of my time alone with her. ‘Kim’s great,’ I said. ‘She really knows her stuff.’

‘It’s a team effort,’ Mindy said, frowning at a small beige table that had probably come from Ikea. It sat flush against the outer wall of a cubicle and had nothing on it but dust. ‘I hate this table,’ she said.

I took a sip from the coffee I’d bought downstairs. ‘So my job is Kim’s job, right? Everything she’s doing I should know how to do?’

‘That’s right.’ She nudged the table with her hip. Bending over a few inches, she spoke to it: ‘Why are you here?’

‘I’m not getting much sense of how this all works,’ I confessed. ‘I know this is only my second day, but I’m trying to get a handle on the job, and I—’

‘Did I give you the calendar with the moon phases?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I can take that off my list.’

‘Where does the information come from? About our customers, I mean. Their ages and birthdays.’

‘They give it to us when they apply for a free horoscope reading online.’

‘So that’s where we get all the email addresses?’

‘Ryan,’ she said, mistaking my last name for my first and evoking my high school gym coach, ‘I have a philosophy: Leave the nitty-gritty to the team. That’s why you have a team.’

Later that morning, a tech person tried to fix my computer by fiddling with the cables. I walked around the loft and found lying on shelf tops many of the items we were selling. They reminded me of the kind of trinkets that came encased in plastic bubbles and rolled out of dime machines. In the kitchen over the sink was a sign that read, Rinse your dishes and put them in the dishwasher. (If Lucien can do it, you can do it). In the men’s room, taped onto the door of the stall, another sign read, If you smell something, say something.

Mid-afternoon, while Kim sweated through phone calls and Skype messages and Mindy’s commands, I found that my computer was finally working and visited the Mollyglow site. I double-clicked on a cartoon bunny and a chipper, syrupy voice blurted out, ‘Well, okay, then! Let’s see what the future holds for you!’ I immediately closed the screen to silence the bunny.

Athena’s presence was everywhere, but she herself was nowhere to be seen. She was ubiquitous, elusive, and oddly menacing – like Keyser Sőze in The Usual Suspects. At the end of my second day, I sat at home eating a cheeseburger and surfing YouTube. On impulse I typed in ‘Athena’ and ‘psychic forecast’. She had nearly two-dozen videos posted. I played the first one.

Here was the woman from the poster - blond and matronly but bearing enough makeup to warrant an evening on the town. In a sleepy British accent, she told me she could help me. She knew of my struggles, my financial burdens, and my potential for true and lasting happiness. In fact, my happiness meant more to her than anything else in the world. Wasn’t it time I allowed the universe and all its powers to work in my favour?

I then Googled ‘Athena’, ‘credit card’ and ‘fraud’. Within seconds, I was scrolling through over 400 complaints on a consumer advocacy website.

Mid-morning of my third day, I ran into Kim in the kitchen. She was staring into the refrigerator, looking for space to fit her Tupperware.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Hi. Sorry about Friday.’

‘What happens Friday?’

‘Oh! I thought Mindy told you. I won’t be here. I have to take my mom to her doctor in Philadelphia.’

In a panic and with quickening steps, I made my way to Mindy’s desk. She was on the phone and held me at bay with a raised finger while she finished her call. As she hung up, she said, ‘What is it?’

The words poured out of me. I wasn’t being trained. Kim was too busy. And tomorrow was Thursday and the next day was Friday and I wasn’t going to be able to do all the things Kim did to keep the emails flowing and the drop pages dropping and the upsales selling. Friday, I told her, was going to be a disaster.

‘This is exactly the nitty-gritty I was talking about, Ryan. It’s Kim’s job to train you and it’s Kim you need to be talking to about this. I have enough on my plate as it is.’

‘But what happens when – ’

‘Do you really want to be helpful?’ She took a screwdriver from her desk drawer and handed it to me. ‘Dismantle that ugly table and put it away somewhere.’

I carried the table to a corner and flipped it over. On my knees, I worked at the embedded screws, each of which proved to be a challenge. The fourth leg wouldn’t budge, and I was all but yanking on it when Inga approached.

‘Ha ha,’ she whispered. ‘Look at you. You’re copy-editing!’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Of course.’

‘In all the time you’ve worked here, has anyone ever just come out and said…’ I found myself reluctant to be the first.

‘Said what? We’re a horrible company that sells worthless crap to innocent people? And sets up unauthorized recurring charges? And has a phoney customer service number? No, no one ever says that. Actually, it’s been calm here for the past few days. Wait till you see Lucien in action. Have you ever had a boss call you a ‘worthless piece of shit’? And when he yells at you, his spit lands on your face.’

I felt myself wince. ‘How can you stand it?’

‘A trick of the brain,’ she said. ‘You pretend none of it’s happening, and then – poof – three years have gone by.’

Despite the cold, I was sweating. I walked back over to Mindy’s desk and told her I was going to lunch.

‘Did you take care of that table?’

‘Just about,’ I said. ‘I’ll finish it when I get back.’

‘Thank you,’ she said with a smile. ‘It’s nice to see someone besides me doing work around here, for a change.’

I walked out of the building expecting to feel a sense of relief. But there was none – and no further panic, either. There was only the smooth, gray numbness that comes with being desperate and unemployed – again. Around the corner from the office, I sat down at a computer terminal in a Tasti-D-Lite, addressed an email to Mindy, and wrote, Thanks, anyway.

What else was there to say? Sincerely sounded insincere. Yours sounded absurd.

Best of luck! I wrote, and before sending I signed off with Ryan so she’d know who the email was from.

But the universe and all its powers were working in Mindy’s favour – or Athena’s. The next time I logged on, my usurped mailbox coughed up an offer for a rare, mystically-charged crystal ball – mine for five easy payments of $14.99.

David Jégou: Chief Accountant

Interview and translation by Andrew Hussey

For the past five years I’ve been working as chief accountant for a company called CIDEF (Centre d’Information et de Documentation et de Formation) in the suburb of Montreuil just outside Paris. I like the job. The organization is run by the French Communist Party and trains local councillors about law and other stuff. What I like most is that the staff are all card-carrying Communists – very militant and all passionate about what they are doing. I’m not a Communist and never will be, but it’s great to work in a place where people care about what they do, and you feel sort of connected to the world of politics and social issues. On a daily basis, they’re all usually squabbling with each other about politics, but whenever they come into my office they’re amicable and friendly. They have to be because I handle all the money. It’s a big job. I’m on my own with a government budget of three million to dole out. But they’re all good, decent people anyway. If they weren’t doing this they’d be teachers or nurses and things like that. We have a laugh most days too.

This is all so different from the other jobs I’ve done as an accountant. I came to Paris in 1997 – my girlfriend came here to study and I followed her. I ended up working in La Défense, a horrible district of skyscrapers where all the money is made. I hated all the jobs – it was so corporate and crappy and it made me feel like an insect or a sheep, just doing all of this stuff without any say or control in what I was doing. I love rock and dance music and really wanted to work in the record industry but I was too lazy and stupid to really get involved. My other dream then was to go to Manchester and go to the Hacienda Club which I read about in the French music press – it sounded brilliant. But I never had the money to go. I bought all the records and CDs though and in my office in Montreuil I’ve got a poster of the Hacienda from the old days. I’ve also got a signed poster of the Jesus and Mary Chain – they were a great band.

I loved it straight away when I got to CIDEF – so different from all those corporate places, and everybody arguing about stuff that matters. I also like the area. I live in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, which is a bit posh but not too much. But this place is different from central Paris. It used to be the old working-class who lived here – that’s why it’s always been Communist – but now it’s mainly immigrants from all over the place. You can see the difference when people get on the metro.

I start off on Line Nine, which is quite smart, and then at Richelieu, where I change for Line Eight, everything changes and there are more Africans, Arabs, all different nationalities. Then you know you’re heading to the suburbs. I normally set off about eight in the morning, and get to the office for nine. I listen to music and read things like les Inrockuptibles magazine or books about music and things that I’m interested in like art, but you can’t read anything too complicated, especially when the metro is full and everybody is bad-tempered. Nobody speaks on the metro anyway. I used to go to the office on my scooter but my back hurts when I do that now. I wouldn’t mind cycling on the Vélib’ – the cheap bikes you can hire in Paris – but it’s a bit far and I’m a bit lazy. And anyway, the Vélib’ doesn’t go out to the suburbs, which is something the Paris Town Council has to sort out. And then, you know, I don’t like the rain.

I get home about eight. I used to go out to gigs at least two or three times a week but now I sometimes feel more tired and I like to chill out in my flat and watch DVDs, make something nice to eat. Anyway, the 15th is a bit far from the main clubs and venues. I used to live up near Pigalle, which was great and I’d walk to gigs and that kind of thing, and I liked the bar life, but, you know, everything changes and I like it here too – small shops, nice family restaurants.

I like Montreuil and I’d miss it if I didn’t work there. I wouldn’t mind living there but I don’t want to be too near the office. I’ve seen the area change in the past few years – it’s getting a little bit more fashionable and there are BoBos [bourgeois bohémiens – Parisian yuppies] who are moving in all the time. You notice this in the way that people dress on the street, their accents and the new organic shops – which are expensive and no ordinary person goes to them.

From my window I can see the council estates – the walls are painted pink and they’re a bit drab, but you can also see that people are making an effort to make them nice inside. There are lots of young people – some of them dealing drugs from the park benches in the little bits of green spaces. The police come here a lot and chase them. It’s a bit like watching a film from my window – you get to know the different faces and characters and nothing really changes that much. Sometimes there’s a car chase. There are a lot of poor and desperate people around here.

Every Friday, we all go to a local restaurant as a group from work. If you don’t go it’s considered a bad thing. There are plenty of good simple restaurants around here and you can get a good meal for about ten to fifteen euros. There are lots of ethnic places, and French of course, old-fashioned basic places which I like. The rest of the week I just buy stuff from the supermarket – salads, sandwiches – and eat something in my office. I don’t think I’m rich or poor. I go on holidays and do what I want, but then I don’t like expensive things really.

I don’t worry about the future. This is where I am and I’m going to stay here.