I had never heard of the little Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. And yet, that’s where it all began. With an ordinary incident, one that happens frequently, but so frequently that it finally started something unstoppable.
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‘You spend your life swallowing insults.’
I had never heard of the little Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. And yet, that’s where it all began. With an ordinary incident, one that happens frequently, but so frequently that it finally started something unstoppable.
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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.
Tahar Ben Jelloun is the author of several novels including, The Sacred Night, which received the Prix Goncourt in 1987. His most recent novel is The Rising of the Ashes. He lives in Paris.
More about the author →‘He inspected the chest where the snakes slept. There was the viper, quiet, in a deep sleep.’
‘I want the reader to be conscious of reading and not being just drawn into the book and forgetting themselves and forgetting their life.’
Claire-Louise Bennett on her novel Checkout 19.
‘Fiction, even if it’s completely made up, does say something about how you experience reality.’
Mary Gaitskill talks about her book The Devil’s Treasure.
‘No person or doll had anatomy like that. It was, she reasoned, some mistake, a dud in the assembly line, but something about it felt special, auspicious.’
A story by Adrian Van Young.
‘I live on the border, between two states. I've lived here all my life, just about, and I know this place like the back of my hand’.
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