Translated from the Chinese by Eric Abrahamsen
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Translated from the Chinese by Eric Abrahamsen
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
A Yi’s books include the novel A Perfect Crime and the collections Grey Stories and The Bird Saw Me. His work has appeared in the Guardian and Paper Republic. He is the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Chutzpah. He lives in Beijing.
More about the author →‘A man will only return to his birthplace in the countryside when he is dead. This is our reality.’
‘Once I came home at the end of August, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Indeed, nothing had.‘
‘At a time when China has become a unifying specter of menace for Western governments, this issue of Granta brings the country’s literary culture into focus.’
The editor introduces the issue.
‘Fiction is a kind of spell, I said, and analysing a story is an exorcism. It loses all its mystery.’
Fiction by Zhang Yueran, translated by Jeremy Tiang.
‘Against the immensity of things, look at what you can grasp, he seems to say. Grasp it tightly.’
Thomas McMullan on the writing of Kōbō Abe.
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