Overhead bullets concuss the air, disrupt Nzinga’s world. There’s no aim to the gunfire, no malice. A government patrol has stumbled on her father’s distant sentries, both sides firing blind in their mutual retreat.
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‘This is why he will survive this war to return to his wife and daughter, barring a blind bullet, an errant piece of shrapnel, some careless act of destiny.’
Overhead bullets concuss the air, disrupt Nzinga’s world. There’s no aim to the gunfire, no malice. A government patrol has stumbled on her father’s distant sentries, both sides firing blind in their mutual retreat.
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‘I alone know a running stream
that is recovery partly and dim sweat
of a day-fever’
A poem by Rowan Evans.
‘Humour is a thread we hang onto. It punctures through the fog of guilt.’
Momtaza Mehri in conversation with Warsan Shire.
‘Something shifted in me that night. A small voice in my head said, maybe you can make a way for yourself as a poet here, too.’
Mary Jean Chan in conversation with Andrew McMillan.
‘There was to be an exhibition. There were lots of pictures like his, apparently – of waiters, pastry cooks, valets, bellboys.’
An essay by Jason Allen-Paisant from Granta 159: What Do You See?
‘I have started to see that nothing is itself’
A poem by Jason Allen-Paisant from Granta 154: I’ve Been Away for a While.
George Makana Clark was raised in Rhodesia. He is the author of the novel The Raw Man and the story collection The Small Bees’ Honey. His work has appeared in The Granta Book of the African Short Story, The O. Henry Prize Stories and Tin House, among other publications. He teaches fiction writing and African literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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‘Fifty years I’ve played here, except for stretches in Arizona and Mississippi, after my divorce.’
Fiction by Kate Lister Campbell.
‘I spend the afternoon scarifying ceilings. My neck and shoulders are killing me by the time I leave.’
Fiction by Rue Baldry.
‘I often see myself thrusting into soft clouds, hallucinating.’
Two poems from Chia-Lun Chang’s debut poetry collection Prescribee.
‘We experience, while still young, our most thoroughly felt desires as a kind of horizon.’
Anuk Arudpragasam on his second novel A Passage North.
‘But the crime did exist; it was Cuba itself.’
Translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne.
‘It was hard for me to understand how someone could live alone.’
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