The Passengers: Shortlisted for The Rathbones Folio Prize 2023

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London, Open Pen (21 May 2020). "Not Far From The Junction". Open Pen . Retrieved 2 September 2022. Signed Edition: An original and profound portrait of contemporary Britain told through the testimonies of its inhabitants. Ashon was educated at Countesthorpe Community College and Balliol College, Oxford. [1] In the mid-1990s he worked as a music journalist specialising in hip hop for publications including Trace, Muzik and Hip Hop Connection. [2] In 1997 he started the record label Big Dada Recordings in conjunction with Ninja Tune, signing and releasing albums by artists including Roots Manuva, Diplo, Speech Debelle and Wiley. [2]

The Passengers by Will Ashon (Faber) is shortlisted for the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize. The winner will be announced on Monday 27March at the British Library. The single most impressive thing I’ve read in the last few years was Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson. At the other end of the scale in terms of length, I also loved Olga Ravn’s The Employees, which is probably the book I’ve bought for the most people over the last few years. The main reason I noticed this book was because the cover design immediately brought to mind Craig Taylor's Londoners. This must surely have been intentional. It sounded like a very similar concept -- interviews with "ordinary people" giving insight into their lives. 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.'

A spectacularly enjoyable and compelling reading experience . . . funny, moving, surprising and thought-provoking. It humanises literature in this toxic moment.’

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. The Passengers by Will Ashon review – voices of a nation". the Guardian. 4 August 2022 . Retrieved 2 September 2022.

This marvel of a book has found a form for all of us.

It’s almost like a puzzle. You have to construct in your head what’s going on. Which can be different things, depending on what you see. You don’t know what’s going on and it’s like this is a message for you. This is the note that tells you what’s going on and you need to understand it but then you can’t really read it. It’s like a message in a bottle. It doesn’t say something about a particular time in history but it’s like a construction of that period instead. An imagined oral history of the future. Ravn’s tale of the employees of a space ship in a far away galaxy is told solely in transcripts of the de-briefs carried out following some kind of ‘incident’.Never has a Humanoid Resources report been so compelling.

I believe that there are people in life who you meet for a certain reason – and people can bring out certain aspectsof your character that maybe you didn’t know were there. You’ve met them for a reason and they’re beneficial to whoever you become or whoever you’re destined to become. At school we moved classes, so I got split up from my friends, but actually it turned out to be one of the best things that could’ve happened. I met so many new people who I feel really changed my life. People come into your life for a reason, because of fate. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? There’s not a lot of stuff that you can do about it to be fair. You’ve gotta try and rationalise it yourself. Speaking to people about it really helps – getting your feelings out and talking to others. I try and play a lot of sports. I play a lotof tennis and things like that just to try and calm me mind and whatnot. But yeah, it’s just really, really difficult. You’ve got to really try and keep yourself busy. And in my job it’s difficult, to be fair, because I spend so much time driving. Things just pop into my head for no particular reason whatsoever and then you’re sitting on your own re-thinking about it, re-thinking about it. And the craziest thing about it is you’re always questioning everything you do.It looks like it’s wobbly. The ground looks like it’s shaking or something. Because the pieces don’t quite fit, so it looks like it’s wobbly. The person might be wobbling. It looks like an optical illusion, because she’s standing but it looks like she’s sitting down at the same time. I think he took a picture and then maybe split the picture into pieces, like maybe gradually cut it and then fixed it together. It looks like it is one thing but then you realise it’s lots of little pieces. Like, this would be one country, that would be another country, that would be a different country. It would look like it’s one picture, but it would be lots of different pictures. Then you can kind of tell a story, cos there’ll be lots of ideas. Otherwise if you actually know what’s happening, it’s not that interesting. Extracted from The Passengers by Will Ashon (Faber) which is shortlisted for the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize. The winner is announced on Monday 27March. The result is necessarily uneven, and no one particularly makes original statements, but that variety is one of the book’s strengths, together with the humour in some of the sections. It’s an enjoyable read, naturally easy to dip in and out of, and it makes you think (well me, anyway). Ashon’s gloriously polyphonic book scales the heights. A deeply felt and humane portrait of where we are.’