First published 2009
This issue of Granta examines the relationship between labor and identity in contemporary life. The collection spans from unemployment to overwork, investigating how jobs define who we become. Steven Hall reports from a leading robotics laboratory on automation's future. Caroline Moorehead documents worker trafficking into Britain. Daniel Alarcon goes undercover in Peru's book piracy networks. Salman Rushdie reflects on laziness as resistance. Rose George surveys the current state of global shipping. Ruchir Joshi travels across India to witness economic transformation reshaping careers nationwide. Aminatta Forna profiles Sierra Leone's final veterinarian. The issue includes photography of Johannesburg's Ponte City Apartments by Mikhael Subotzky alongside new fiction from Joshua Ferris, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Julian Barnes, and Jim Crace. The anthology reveals how work has become both invisible in literature and omnipresent in daily existence.
Genres: essays, anthologies, business, contemporary, economics, 21st-century, journalism, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: invisible, omnipresent
Setting: Johannesburg, Britain, Peru, India, Sierra Leone
Period: Contemporary
320 pages · Paperback · Granta