"A magical mystery tour of modern Britain...It is both a deeply quotidian book...and an extraordinary one. Choral, polyvocal, symphonic, its evocation of Britain today had, for me, the special flavour of those lockdown dreams: an endlessly strange journey through the familiar." —The Telegraph
"The book makes you feel less alone. It opens the walls of the boxes we all trade our language and emotions in and lets us travel among ourselves." —Max Porter
"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
"The Passengers is an absorbing insight into the lives and minds of so-called ordinary people...These are everyday voices we don't hear from or listen to often enough - oral history becomes verbatim poetry." —Clio Barnard
"A catalogue of startling intimacies. A brilliant, surprising, addictive book." —Chris Power
"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
"Anonymous testimonies collected from people across the UK create a snapshot of dreams and frustrations, pain and joy... 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." —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.
