The Night Cleaner

Florence Aubenas (Éditions du Seuil)

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Hardback

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English

Polity Press
06 May 2011

Society & Social Sciences; Poverty & unemployment; Employment & unemployment; Financial crises & disasters

The idea was simple: pack a suitcase, go to another city where you have no connections and try to find a job, anonymously. That was the idea that took Florence Aubenas - one of France's most accomplished undercover journalists - on a journey into the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Day after day she searched for work, one unemployed worker among others, with no special skills or qualifications. She immersed herself in the crowd of job seekers, going from one employment office to another, eventually managing to cobble together a few hours working as a night cleaner on a ferry that crossed the English Channel.

For many people the global financial crisis seems real enough but remote from their daily lives. They have little sense of what it really means to be unemployed in the midst of a recession. Florence Aubenas was determined to find out. This book is the story of her journey.

The Night Cleaner became an instant number one bestseller in France and has subsequently become a bestseller in many countries throughout the world. Better than any academic treatise on the topic, this book shows what recession means today.

By: Florence Aubenas (Éditions du Seuil)
Imprint: Polity Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 213mm, Width: 145mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 386g
ISBN: 9780745651996
ISBN 10: 0745651992
Pages: 184
Publication Date: 06 May 2011
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Florence Aubenas has worked as a journalist for over 20 years for Liberation and the Nouvel Observateur. She has visited war zones, police stations, courts and factories on strike in the course of her reporting. In 2005 she was kidnapped by insurgents in Iraq and held hostage along with her interpreter, making front-page news worldwide. She emerged 157 says later unscathed.

Reviews for The Night Cleaner

This personal account of the unmaking of the French working class is not only great journalism, it is a true work of literature: beautifully written, intense, unforgettable. Katha Pollitt, The Nation <p> Follow Florence Aubenas into the armies of the night, among the invisible souls who clean up the mess we make by day, absorb her insights into the great recession and its impact on the most marginal. Beatrix Campbell, author of Wigan Pier Revisited <p> Too often, the impact of the global recession is reduced to general statistics. But in Florence Aubenas' provocative and passionate book it is captured in exquisite detail, emotion, and human faces. Whether in Cairo, Caen, or Wisconsin, the desperation that accompanies the soul-destroying search for work and economic stability continues to push people to the brink of their patience and dignity. What makes Aubenas' book so brilliant is that this culmination of her undercover investigation does not simply linger on their lack of hope, b