Granta 140: State of Mind

Water, Water, Everywhere

Darrell Hartman

Blameless

Claudio Magris

If Mother’s Happy

Kathleen McCaul Moura

Comfort Woman

Erika Krouse

Hallelujah! A Brief History of Bombing People

Ben Mauk

The BBC National Short Story Award Shortlist

On this year’s shortlist are three of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists

Krapp Hour

Anne Carson’s Beckettian radio hour, featuring Jack Kerouac, his mother Gabrielle, and Martin Heidegger

Battle of the Booker: Meet the Shortlist

Six novels contend for the world’s most prestigious literary prize.

Chère Madame

Three previously unpublished letters from Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis.

Close-up of an anatomised brain for Anil Seth

Nothing to be afraid of | State of Mind

Anil K. Seth on the ties between our brains, bodies and consciousness.

Sympathy | State of Mind

Rachel Hewitt on motherhood and sympathy.

Desire | State of Mind

Andrea Stuart on different experiences of desire in the Caribbean and Britain.

Cats Explain Things to Me | Discoveries

Typo

Take a paws from your busy day for this week’s Discoveries – guest edited by Granta’s very own Typo the cat.

Jesse Ball | Best of Young American Novelists

Jesse Ball on writing about different worlds, the fraudulence of speech, and why he named his pet dog Goose.

Authors

Evie Wyld | Podcast

Evie Wyld & Ted Hodgkinson

Evie Wyld talks to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about why living in Peckham makes it easier to write about rural Australia, how memory informs her stories and why she can’t write a novel without at least one shark in it.

Eli Goldstone | Five Things Right Now

Eli Goldstone

‘The closest I come to meditating is sitting in front of a tumble dryer with a dead magazine.’

Sally Rooney and Joanna Walsh in Conversation

Sally Rooney & Joanna Walsh

‘What I’m trying to do is to find ways of expressing myself which try to subvert those forms in order to make the speech act, or the writing act, transgressive in a way.’

Cynthia Ozick | First Sentence

Cynthia Ozick

‘Some stories begin with an incident, or a set of enigmatic circumstances, or a scene indelibly witnessed, or the relationship of unlike temperaments, or even something as gossamer as a mood. And then there is the kind of story that is rooted in an idea.’

The American Experience in 737 Novels

The history of American literature in a navigable map.

from the archive

Israel

Amos Oz

‘Israeli readers do not really enjoy their literature. They read it as if obsessed.’

The French Lieutenant’s Diary

John Fowles

‘It was really just one visual idea: a woman standing at the end of the Cobb and staring mysteriously out to sea.’

The Seventh Man

Haruki Murakami

‘I looked up at the sky. A few grey cotton chunks of cloud hung there, motionless.’

Attempt at an Inventory

Georges Perec & John Sturrock

‘Nine beers, two Tuborgs, four Guinnesses.’

How to Write about Africa

Binyavanga Wainaina

‘Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.’