Photograph courtesy of the authors
‘Four Syrian Borders’ is product of a joint collaboration between Granta and the International Literary Showcase, an initiative supported by Writers’ Centre Norwich, the British Council and Arts Council England.
‘The landscape, glimpsed through plumes of dust thrown up by trucks, grew drier, more hostile as it climbed away from the sea.’
Photograph courtesy of the authors
‘Four Syrian Borders’ is product of a joint collaboration between Granta and the International Literary Showcase, an initiative supported by Writers’ Centre Norwich, the British Council and Arts Council England.
‘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.
Esa Aldegheri is an academic and activist working in the field of migration and integration. She speaks five languages, is a researcher at the University of Glasgow and Chair of Edinburgh City of Sanctuary. @aldeghesa
More about the author →Gavin Francis is a physician in Edinburgh and the award-winning author of Empire Antarctica, Adventures in Human Being and Shapeshifters. He's a regular contributor to the Guardian, LRB and the New York Review of Books. www.gavinfrancis.com @gavinfranc
More about the author →
‘I tried to work out how many elements I would have plugged if I retired at sixty, and soon I was fatigued before a simple subtraction.’
Fiction by A. Jiang.
‘An enormous black form rose from the water. Uncle Feng told me in a low voice to run fast.’
Fiction by Can Xue, translated by Annelise Finegan.
‘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.
‘Lu Dong is a fifth-rate actor – that’s by his own ranking system.’
Fiction by Shuang Xuetao, translated by Jeremy Tiang.
A production company is looking for contestants to participate in a new TV show, modelled on The Apprentice. They are seeking unpublished writers who have completed a novel.
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