Granta 140: State of Mind

Hallelujah! A Brief History of Bombing People

Ben Mauk on the West’s longstanding love of missiles, drones, bombs and nukes.

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.

The BBC National Short Story Award Shortlist

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

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.

Mistaken | State of Mind

Chère Madame

Three previously unpublished letters from Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis.

Fiction Special | Discoveries

The Granta magazine editors share some of their favourite short stories.

Garth Risk Hallberg | Best of Young American Novelists

Garth Risk Hallberg on how September 11th lead to his first real piece of fiction, the state of American literature today, and the difficulties of getting the perfect balance of realism and imagination into a piece of writing.

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.

Five Things Right Now: Renee Gladman

Renee Gladman

‘I go here to slow everything down, to study shadow in a space of dreaming.’

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.’

First Sentence: Eliza Griswold

Eliza Griswold

‘This, of course, was years before anyone knew or cared who Boko Haram was.’

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.’

Trollhättan

Second Mother

Water, Water, Everywhere

Two Poems

Blameless