Author:
Joseph Ponthus
Get two free audiobooks AND support bookstores 🤩
Make the switch
Send as gift
Add to Wish List
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Limited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayOn the Line
Notes From a Factory
Narrator
John Sackville
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn more
Translator
Stephanie Smee
Length
3 hours 33 minutes
Language
English
Unable to find work in his field, Joseph Ponthus enlists with a temp agency and starts to pick up casual shifts in the fish processing plants and abattoirs of Brittany. Day after day he records with infinite precision the nature of work on the production line: the noise, the weariness, the dreams stolen by the repetitive nature of exhausting rituals and physical suffering. But he finds solace in a life previously lived. Shelling prawns, he dreams of Alexandre Dumas. Pushing cattle carcasses, he recalls Apollinaire. And, in the grace of the blank spaces created by his insistent return to a new line of text – mirroring his continued return to the production line – we discover the woman he loves, the happiness of a Sunday, Pok Pok the dog, the smell of the sea.
In this celebrated French bestseller, translated by Stephanie Smee, Ponthus captures the mundane, the beautiful and the strange, writing with an elegance and humour that sit in poignant contrast with the blood and sweat of the factory floor.
After studying literature and social work, Joseph Ponthus worked for over ten years as a social worker and special needs teacher in the suburbs of Paris. In 2012 he co-authored Nous... La Cite (The Suburbs are Ours). His most recent work is A la Ligne (On the Line). He lives and works in Brittany, France.
Sackville is a stage, film and television actor, as well as a voice artist. He graduated from the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to play leading and supporting roles in regional theatre, the West End, the National Theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Sackville has appeared on film and television in The Crown, Call the Midwife, Genius, The Secret of Crickley Hall, Midsomer Murders and Rosemary & Thyme. His more recent projects include Sky Atlantic's Lockerbie, ITV/Disney + Suspect and Truth & Conviction for Angel Films. Film includes The Wedding Date and The Lost City of Z. He has narrated over 150 audio books. Sackville also lends his voice to documentaries and computer games.
Audiobook details
Narrator:
John Sackville
ISBN:
9781867527060
Length:
3 hours 33 minutes
Language:
English
Publisher:
Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Publication date:
April 1, 2021
Edition:
Unabridged
Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks