Passengers (eBook)

Will Ashon (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
288 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-36416-9 (ISBN)

Infos

An original and profound portrait of contemporary Britain told through the testimonies of its inhabitants. SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2023 'A spectacularly enjoyable and compelling reading experience . . . funny, moving, surprising and thought-provoking. It humanises literature in this toxic moment.' MAX PORTER, author of Lanny 'Seemingly simple yet so deeply profound, The Passengers is an absorbing insight into the lives and minds of so-called ordinary people: their hopes and fears and idiosyncrasies at a specific moment in time.' CLIO BARNARD, director of Ali & Ava and The Essex Serpent 'A nation's psyche comes to the surface. The Passengers is not just an oral history of the contemporary moment but, drenched in mood and texture, renders the country itself as a sonic collage.' SUKHDEV SANDHU, GUARDIAN Between October 2018 and March 2021, Will Ashon collected voices - people talking about their lives, needs, dreams, loves, hopes and fears - all of them with some connection to the British Isles. He used a range of methods including letters sent to random addresses, hitchhiking, referrals from strangers and so on. He conducted the interviews in person, on the phone, over the internet or asked people to record themselves. Interview techniques ranged from asking people to tell him a secret to choosing an arbitrary question from a list. The resulting testimonies tell the collective story of what it feels like to be alive in a particular time and place - here and now. The Passengers is a book about how we give shape to our lives, find meaning in the chaos, acknowledge the fragility of our existence while alleviating this anxiety with moments of beauty, love, humour and solidarity. 'A magical mystery tour of Britain . . . extraordinary.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Ashon's gloriously polyphonic book scales the heights. A deeply felt and humane portrait of where we are.' NIVEN GOVINDEN, author of Diary of a Film 'This book couldn't have come into my life at a better time. It's a guiding mate. It enters like a cat through a window, ready to take your attention and show you what it needs to.' TICE CIN, author of Keeping the House

WILL ASHON is the author of two novels and two works of non-fiction, Strange Labyrinth and the critically acclaimed Chamber Music: About the Wu-Tang (in 36 Pieces). Ashon also founded the independent record label Big Dada, which he ran for over fifteen years. He lives in London. @willashon

Rezensionen

All authors secretly want to sneak into people's heads and record their deepest, darkest, most intimate and most human thoughts . . . Only Will Ashon - the illicit lovechild of Alfred Kinsey and Shere Hite - has figured out a way to achieve this. A modern day Domesday book.

Such a profoundly compassionate, moving act of attention.

In an era of social distancing, this book made me feel gloriously connected to the country I live in. A kaleidoscopic voyage through the inner lives of so many ordinary, extraordinary people. A tapestry of epic themes and tiny moments, there is laughter and tenderness and life as it is really lived on every page. It's a book to make you fall in love and fascination with the human race. I adored it.

Stunningly, sometimes heartbreakingly, human - an oral history of right now. We need this book.

A catalogue of startling intimacies. A brilliant, surprising, addictive book.

This book couldn't have come into my life at a better time. It's a guiding mate. It enters like a cat through a window, ready to take your attention and show you what it needs to.

Engrossing . . . The variety of voices collected here reminds us of the uniqueness of every individual's perspective . . . Ashon is a deft prose sculptor, working hard behind the scenes so that we can hear his interviewees' voices clearly as we read and creating a structure in which improvisation and serendipity thrive. It is an artful addition to the oral history genre.

Will Ashon's new book presents us with a kaleidoscope of humanity and shows us that the voices we don't usually get to hear are the ones we need to learn from. Original, enjoyable and empathetic, this is a hugely impactful and memorable reading experience.

An emotional census . . . It's mad, it's surreal but it's also very beautiful . . . If you want a really interesting, funny book about 'What's it all about?', this is as good as I've ever read. I really, really enjoyed it.

Will Ashon's gloriously polyphonic book scales the heights. A deeply felt and humane portrait of where we are.

A magical mystery tour of modern Britain . . . a brilliant, uncategorisable book . . . Part oral history, part found poetry, his book uses the voices of ordinary Britons to produce a picture of the nation at a time of unique perspective. It is both a deeply quotidian book and an extraordinary one . . . an endlessly strange journey through the familiar . . . a book as readable as it is strange . . . [Ashon] brings a fine ear to a writing process that has as much in common with hip hop sampling as it does with Eliotesque high-modernism . . . a hopeful book, and a compassionate one.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 2.8.2022
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Zeitgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Schlagworte: Agnes Varda, chance • cultural survey, contemporary Britain, experimental writing • Every day lives, ordinary lives • Granta, Stinging Fly, The White Review, Fitzcarraldo Editions • Literary fiction, Literary Non-fiction, multi-voiced, oral history, oral tradition, the Goldsmiths Prize • Londoners, Craig Taylor, David Shields, Reality Hunger, Akenfield, Ronald Blythe, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter, Night Haunts, Sukhdev Sandhu • The Years, Annie Ernaux, Life A User's Manual George Perec, Svetlana Alexeivitch
• ISBN-10: 0-571-36416-0 / 0571364160
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-36416-9 / 9780571364169