Granta 109.

The theme of Work is given a fairly loose definition here. In terms of fiction, the results, as usual with Granta, are somewhat mixed. Both Jim Crace and Joshua Ferris present extracts from books which are now published (All That Follows and The Unnamed). Crace's works well as a short piece of writing but, the Ferris piece - while looking an interesting book about a disease which makes the victim compulsively walk (kind of like a manual version of Speed), it doesn't really work on its own here. Julian Barnes presents a typically strange piece about a blind musician and a suspect doctor which is interesting and the stand out fiction for me here. VV Ganeshananthan writes an interesting short fiction piece on a Sri Lankan suicide bombers. In fact, doctors and medics seem to get a disproportionately high level of coverage - with Aminatta Forna presenting an interesting piece on a vet in Sierra Leone and Kent Haruf talking about hospice patients as well. There are quite a few memoirs of father's work most of which are well presented although I was bored by Peter Stothard's piece on this subject. Of the short pieces, Ruchir Joshi identifies some strange occupations in India. Salman Rushdie presents a typically learned set of thoughts on Sloth - but as usual with Rushdie's non-fiction, I felt there was an element of smugness about the piece - a "look at how knowledgeable I am"-ness to it. The most interesting piece to me was the opening piece by Daniel Alarcón on book pirating in Peru which is multi-faceted and thoughtful. It's an interesting collection - but not too much on the work that most of us do and some pieces, like Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's memoirs of growing up in Kenya are more about family than work per se.