Death to Books
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Dite
Reena Usha Rungoo
‘She collected stamps when she was younger, then switched to books, degrees, and – when she moved abroad – white lovers.’
Fiction by Reena Usha Rungoo.
The Devil’s Son
Portia Subran
‘He was prone to what he did call adventures, like if he had an irrepressible pull to wander every trace and tributary contained in Chaguanas.’
Fiction by Portia Subran.
What Burns
Julie Bouchard
‘Seven thousand forest fires are currently burning – fires which, under normal circumstances, would never even cross your mind.’
Fiction by Julie Bouchard, translated by Arielle Aaronson.
A River Then the Road
Pip Robertson
‘In good weather they went camping, meaning they slept in the station wagon with the seats down flat, in a car park at a forest or beach.’
Fiction by Pip Robertson.
Sinking Town
Amitava Kumar
‘The town’s fate was tied to poor development and ecological disaster.’
Amitava Kumar visits a Himalayan town.
Feminisms
Nikki Shaner-Bradford
‘We figured some facts might quell the speculation. It was our duty as friends to put her mind at ease.’
Fiction by Nikki Shaner-Bradford.
Brat
Gabriel Smith
‘There was a red patch, and what looked like a slightly raised piece of dead skin in the centre of my chest. Just to the right of where I assumed my heart was.’
An extract from Gabriel Smith’s novel Brat.
You Are the Product
Paul Dalla Rosa
‘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.
You Are the Product
Rosanna McLaughlin
‘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.
You Are the Product
Lillian Fishman
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
You Are the Product
Daisy Hildyard
‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
The Spread
Stacy Skolnik
‘It was the first teasing days of spring, the scent in the air a cross between death and cum.’
Fiction by Stacy Skolnik.
Two Poems
Sylvia Legris
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
Podcast | Lauren Oyler
Lauren Oyler
‘You are what you do, and you are what you write, to some extent, I believe that at least.’
Lauren Oyler on personality, intention and the collapse between private and authorial selves.
It Is Decidedly So
Sara Baume
‘There is always a cat sitting on the kitchen windowsill, in the background of every ordinary and extraordinary event, a softly focused silhouette, a pair of piercing eyes.’
Sara Baume responds to twenty-nine photographs from Magnum Photos.
The One It Came All This Way For
Victoria Adukwei Bulley
‘all the furs & bright feathers won’t beat / the sunlight on my face like I’m the one it came / all this way for’
Victoria Adukwei Bulley writes four poems in response to twenty-eight photographs from Magnum Photos.
Sakraman
Derek Owusu
‘Between the boy and the fox there were no names.’
Fiction by Derek Owusu, in response to twenty-nine photographs from Magnum Photos.
In Conversation
m nourbeSe philip & Momtaza Mehri
‘I think the stories that cannot yet be told must be told, can only be told, by un-telling.’
Momtaza Mehri in conversation with m nourbeSe philip.
Introduction
Thomas Meaney
‘Culture has been bound up since the beginning with extraction.’
The editor introduces the issue.
Wagner in Africa
James Pogue
‘Many people in the country seem happy to accept mercenaries in exchange for stability.’
James Pogue on the Wagner Group in the Central African Republic.
Prairie Dogs
Benjamin Kunkel
‘After making sure our guests all had the drinks and/or drugs they required, I put on a Sun Ra record.’
A short story by Benjamin Kunkel.
Working the Soil and the Cloud
Danny Franzreb & Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
‘Like all money, Bitcoin is valuable only to the degree that people believe in its value.’
Photography by Danny Franzreb, introduced by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian.
Where the Language Changes
Bathsheba Demuth
‘I am on the hunt for the Russian Empire, or what traces might still exist of its colonial enterprise.’
Bathsheba Demuth travels the Yukon river, following the history of the fur trade and the Nulato massacre.
The Extracted Earth
Thea Riofrancos
‘It’s perhaps hard to imagine a country with abundant mineral or oil reserves simply leaving that wealth underground. But there are precedents here, historical and contemporary.’
Granta interviews Thea Riofrancos.
Monkey Army
Eka Kurniawan
‘He did what people told him to do. He was a machine.’
A short story by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker.
The Last Freeminers of England
William Atkins & Tereza Červeňová
‘It is a principle of freemining that you leave nothing of value on site, nothing other than the mine itself, which is of value only to a freeminer.’
William Atkins visits the Forest of Dean, with photography by Tereza Červeňová.
Drone Wars for Mexico’s Gold Mountains
Anjan Sundaram
‘More than 111,000 people have gone missing in Mexico in the past six years.’
Anjan Sundaram on cartels, conflict and the rate of disappearances in Mexico.
The True Depth of a Cave
Rachel Kushner
‘When you live underground, among the things you discover is that you are not alone.’
Fiction by Rachel Kushner.
Death by GPS
Salvatore Vitale
‘The old romantic warning not to trust a machine more than one’s own intuition has renewed urgency in the digital age.’
Photography by Salvatore Vitale, introduced by Granta.
The Accursed Mountains
Christian Lorentzen
‘The heart was something that healed, but the best you could do with a broken tooth was to keep it in your pocket.’
Christian Lorentzen on tooth extraction.
As They Laid Down Their Cables
Laleh Khalili
‘The Eilat–Ashkelon pipeline went into operation in 1969, on the eve of the nationalisation of oil.’
Laleh Khalili on energy politics and the ‘secret’ pipeline transporting crude oil across southern Israel.
The Darién Gap
Carlos Fonseca
‘He thinks of himself as a man who has learned to be white by living among white people, though all it takes is a look in the mirror to realize his error.’
Fiction by Carlos Fonseca, translated by Jessica Sequeira.
On Boredom
Nuar Alsadir
‘Boredom is a complicated stink of an emotion, one that is far more layered than we presume.’
Nuar Alsadir on boredom.
