’Shortly after its publication in 1980 I was surprised to learn that I had written a travel book’.
Shortly after its publication in 1980 I was surprised to learn that I had written a travel book. I knew nothing about literary genres then, but felt an instinctive recoil, as if my intentions had been misunderstood. I had indeed walked alone through the deserts of my country, Australia, and I had us…
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
‘Hearing, they say, is the first of the senses we develop in the womb.’
‘By the end of our journey together we had signally failed to understand each other, yet an unlikely, even unprecedented connection had formed.’
‘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.
