Press coverage of Night Haunts
Metro, 2 March 2006
The Daily Telegraph, 3 February 2006:
"Night Haunts is grounded in satisfyingly solid, real-world research. Sandhu has spent much time staking out territory, following leads and rumours, interviewing prospective subjects. His adventures have taken him into some dark and difficult terrain. He has sometimes been threatened with violence, and on one occasion, was shot accidentally in the hand while trying to kill vermin. ("That was a bit of a shock," he recalls.) He has also witnessed unexpected epiphanies, such as the sight of a flame-coloured dawn breaking over the city, as seen from a police surveillance helicopter.
"However, this project goes beyond the simple recording of facts and impressions. Although it looks at specific Londoners and their lives, it engages with deeper themes, asking searching questions about the nature of night, of cities, and of Britain today." (SF Said - read full article)
Time Out, 1 March 2006:
"The beautiful site features a soundtrack by sound artist Scanner and writing by journalist Sukdhev Sandhu, who, guided by HV Morton's 1926 classic 'Nights of London' is spending 12 months in pursuit of London's nocturnal habits, hanging out with all sorts of nightworkers, from sewer cleaners to pirate DJs."
New Statesmen, 13 September 2007
"With a writing style that mixes down- to-earth reportage with lyrical flights of fancy, Sandhu simultaneously builds up and dispels the mythology of London. Its more seductive qualities are revealed to be the workings of a great machine, devoted to the accumulation of capital and supported by legions of people who are there to mop up the aftermath." (Daniel Trilling - read full article)
The Independent, 16 November 2007:
"Sandhu's book results from an inspired commission by the public art agency Artangel. The author embraces a social poetics intellectually indebted to documentary reportage, particularly that associated with travels into unknown London. In a series of night-time forays, he shares confidences with cab drivers, bargees, sewer "flushers", cleaners, police and other night workers, as they toil or keep watch in the shadows of the restless city.
"He is a sympathetic listener, but does not leave his own urban concerns or political beliefs at the door. These essays are thoughtful engagements with reality, not just exercises in topographical style. While many see the metropolis today as a global financial centre, where dreams of unlimited accumulation are embodied in brilliantly lit towers, Sandhu explores life below. Large swathes of poverty and unhappiness are revealed, and inequalities thrown into sharp relief, in the 'anti-modernity of the night'." (Ken Worpole - read full article)
The Guardian, 25 November 2007:
"There are chapters on the lives of minicab drivers, police helicopter pilots, Samaritans, cleaners and sewage maintenance people. The book reads like a novel but has the immediacy of good reportage, the sort of stuff that used to appear in Granta. You come away in awe at all that goes on in the capital on an average evening - and full of respect for an author who has left the study to discover how things really work." (Alain de Botton - read full article)