Granta 106: New Fiction Special

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Granta 106: New Fiction Special

Summer 2009

Granta 106 is a special issue devoted to new fiction and includes work by Paul Auster, Amy Bloom, Adam Thirlwell, Helen Simpson, Nicola Barker and Ha Jin.

£14.99

From this Issue

Essays & Memoir|Granta 106
Essays & Memoir|Granta 106

Editor’s Letter

Alex Clark

‘In 1979, when Bill Buford introduced his first issue of Granta, a penetrating, bravura survey of American fiction, he proclaimed his efforts to be ‘a kind of energetic failure’.’

Essays & Memoir|Granta 106
Essays & Memoir|Granta 106

Letter from Gaza

Hisham Matar

‘It is difficult not to see the assassination of Ghassan Kanafani as an attempt to obliterate the Palestinian narrative.’

Poetry|Granta 106padlock
Poetry|Granta 106padlock

Seen

Fanny Howe

‘Every cupboard is old, / every glass and cup / wiped clean.’

Fiction|Granta 106padlock
Fiction|Granta 106padlock

Two Tides

Eleanor Catton

‘The harbour at Mana was a converted mudflat, tightly elbowed and unlovely at any tide but high.’

Fiction|Granta 106padlock
Fiction|Granta 106padlock

In the Crossfire

Ha Jin

‘Meifen had never imagined that his life could be so fragile.’

Essays & Memoir|Granta 106
Essays & Memoir|Granta 106

‘Useless Chaos is What Fiction is About’

Mavis Gallant & Jhumpa Lahiri

‘Useless chaos is what fiction is about.’

Fiction|Granta 106padlock
Fiction|Granta 106padlock

American Subsidiary

William Pierce

‘He was typing up another proposal for robots that would replace human workers in an engine factory.’

The Online Edition

In Conversation|The Online Edition
In Conversation|The Online Edition

Paul Auster | Interview

Paul Auster

Paul Auster discusses his new novel ‘Invisible’, his writing process and the unsettling quality of narrative clarity.

In Conversation|The Online Edition
In Conversation|The Online Edition

Eleanor Catton | Interview

Eleanor Catton

Eleanor Catton, author of the critically acclaimed, Betty Trask-award-winning debut novel, The Rehearsal, talks to Granta.

Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition

Growing up with the King of Pop

Marlon James

‘The thrill of Thriller was being part of something global and local at once.’

Fiction|The Online Edition
Fiction|The Online Edition

Proximity People

Jonathan Lethem

‘People who unfriend their friends while friending their unfriends. People who do not acknowledge the person. Persons who are not personal.’

Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition

Love in the Time of Swine Flu

Alexis Okeowo

‘Being mask-less in the constant sea of blue surgical face masks made me feel like I was an extra on a movie set they forgot to put in costume.’

In Conversation|The Online Edition
In Conversation|The Online Edition

Rhyme and Reason

Katha Pollitt & Adam Gopnik

‘I write for people who like poetry. The people who don’t like poetry are on their own.’

Poetry|The Online Edition
Poetry|The Online Edition

Three Poems

Katha Pollitt

‘Nobody wanted to hear / about the rain or its father / or leviathan slicing the deeps / at the black edge of the world / under the cold blue light of the Pleiades.’

Fiction|The Online Edition
Fiction|The Online Edition

Dragon Island | New Voices

Laura Fellowes

‘This is a wartime story. It is the spring of 1943 and Europe is burning; look down and see.’

Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition

Getting Lost

Heidi Julavits

‘We continued to ski. The bon vivantedness of our exchanges became increasingly coded with a double-edged worry. Would we have to spend the night in the woods?’

Fiction|The Online Edition
Fiction|The Online Edition

Original Message

Austin Grossman

‘So tomorrow we might be on the same side. Unless you’re a triple agent, in which case we already were on the same side.’

In Conversation|The Online Edition
In Conversation|The Online Edition

P.D. Mallamo | Interview

P. D. Mallamo & Roy Robins

‘Writing and reading in third-person present is like a high-speed drive through Nevada at two a.m.: incredibly invigorating and somewhat dangerous.’

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