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.' Extracted from The Passengers by Will Ashon (Faber) which is shortlisted for the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize. The winner is announced on Monday 27March.

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. A renowned New York street photographer, Mermelstein’s latest book consisted only of images he took of people writing, conversing, texting on their phones—except the pictures aren’t of the people so much as their screens. The fragments of conversations, somewhat queasily snatched from over his subjects’ shoulders, add up to a story of a city. Quite an odd story, admittedly, but then it is New York… This book couldn't have come to life at a better time... It enters like a cat through a window, ready to take your attention and show you what it needs to." —Tice Cin You can’t be flippant about Alexievich, so I’ll leave it to her to do the talking (which seems somehow appropriate): ‘This is the way I see and hear the world: through voices, through details of everyday life. This genre – capturing human voices, confessions, testimonies – allows me to use all of my potential, because one has to be at the same time a writer, a journalist, a sociologist, a psychologist, and a priest.’

From October 2018 to March 2021, the English novelist and nonfiction writer Will Ashon spent 30 months in a state of deep listening. He spoke to 100 people from across the UK by phone, online, or while hitchhiking. Like the men and women sporting cardboard confessions in a Gillian Wearing photograph, they told him secrets. They dug up half-forgotten memories, revealed hopes and dreams. He filleted those testimonies for vivid details, and juxtaposed them to hint at strange echoes and shared frequencies. Each is presented anonymously – no headings, no timestamps, no coordinates. In this way 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. The Passengersby Will Ashon,shortlisted for this year’s Rathbones Folio Prize, is a portrait of contemporary Britain told through a patchwork of voices, collected by Ashon over a period of three years. You can read an extract from the book here, find out more about some of the polyphonic books that inspired The Passengers here, and below, read Ashon on losing – or giving away – his writer’s voice in favour of the choral. We stopped next to these fir trees and my daughter said, What’s that noise? What’s going on? We’re looking around for this strange buzzing sound, for this noise. And eventually we looked up and the trees were covered, literally covered, in bees. It’s beautiful to share, you know. I think we are here to share. Share happiness, share love, share our things. Our things are not for ourselves. They are better when we share them.

Life is a flux. It’s constantly moving. It’s like a river – it just carries on, it happens and moves, it changes. 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.' Signed Edition: An original and profound portrait of contemporary Britain told through the testimonies of its inhabitants. 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. A spectacularly enjoyable and compelling reading experience . . . funny, moving, surprising and thought-provoking. It humanises literature in this toxic moment.'

The Passengers by Will Ashon,shortlisted for this year’s Rathbones Folio Prize, is a portrait of contemporary Britain told through a patchwork of voices, collected by Ashon over a period of three years. This extract, taken from the beginning of the book, gives a glimpse of the extraordinary collective portrait woven from these disparate, anonymous voices. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Ashon's gloriously polyphonic book scales the heights. A deeply felt and humane portrait of where we are.'

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. Will Ashon (born 1969) is an English writer and novelist, former music journalist and founder of the Big Dada imprint of Ninja Tune records. [1] 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.’ His mum dreamed it was the Resurrection Day. The end of the world. She was out on a beach with the whole family and all of a sudden the waves of the sea were going all on top of us. And the whole world, every single person in the world, just came to where that sea is. And the water was going on top of us. I was running, trying to get to shelter or whatever. But there was nowhere to go – except that sea. In this particular dream, while everybody is running into that sea and getting under that particular wave that’s coming through, she was saying, Repent to God, repent to God, repent to God. Cos what’s about to happen is worse. In our religion we do translate dreams. It’s like a shaken message, y’know? It just shakes you, type of thing. 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.

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

Engrossing...The variety of voices collected here reminds us of the uniqueness of every individual's perspective...It is an artful addition to the oral history genre." ― Financial Times London, Open Pen (21 May 2020). "Not Far From The Junction". Open Pen . Retrieved 2 September 2022. The closest thing to Ashon’s methodology in contemporary writing is the form of oral history pioneered by Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievitch. Like the Belarusian’s histories of Soviet and post-Soviet life, Passengers is formed from other people’s words, edited and arranged. Unlike Alexievitch, though, Ashon is not creating a history of a particular moment or phenomenon, but a record of the unfocused normal in all its randomness. 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 think I became interested in writing in my late teens, but I’m not sure I was ever interested in becoming “a writer” – I’m still embarrassed to say it now. I like the writing part more than the identity/career part, to be honest.