That Wind Blowing through the Plaza
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Road Trip
Owen Sheers
‘I’ve always been as surprised by what continues in Zimbabwe as much as by what has been lost; the shards of ‘normal’ life that survive in such a frayed society.’
In Goats’ Eyes is the Sky Blue?
Natsuo Kirino
‘The people locked up in Administrative Camp 16 weren’t allowed clocks. In fact there wasn’t a single clock to be found, even in communal areas.’
The making of a Granta cover
Michael Salu
Granta’s artistic director Michael Salu describes how the new issue’s cover (Granta 111: Going Back) came into being.
Bill Morgan | Interview
Bill Morgan
‘We’ve fallen out of the habit of writing out our lives for one another, and instead we just pick up the phone.’
Kerouac/Ginsberg: The Letters
Allen Ginsberg & Jack Kerouac
‘Your isolation like mine is sad and frightful mainly the blind alleys of money and love but life is not over, and much to be written.’
Two Poems
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
‘It was a cruelty I first tried to blame on nature, / Then on growing up, on falling off, on it being / Just an old myth.’
Philippe Claudel | Interview
Philippe Claudel & Emily Greenhouse
‘The modern novel can’t sidestep or ignore the idea of evil on an industrial level’
First Story
William Fiennes
‘We talked a lot about voice – the idea that everyone has a voice, their own voice, and this is something to be valued and celebrated.’
What I’m Listening To: David Bowie
Wesley Stace
Wesley Stace on listening to every live recording of David Bowie. ‘He was always a step ahead.’
I & I: The Natural Mystics
Colin Grant
‘Such a spectacle could not have been envisaged ten years previously at the time of Bob Marley’s death from cancer.’
From our archive: Medtner
Philip Pullman
Our Music Season continues with writing from our archive by Philip Pullman. In this piece,...
What I’m Listening To
Adam Mars-Jones
‘Obscure repertoire is a sensible hiding-place for mediocre technique.’
The Pretty Women of Paris
Anonymous
‘For the last fifteen years she has been richly kept by a Russian prince, who revels in her brutality, viciousness, extravagance and love of brandy.’
Lunch with the Surgeon
Kapka Kassabova
‘Last month, a plastic surgeon in Buenos Aires tried to seduce me.’
The Unwriteable
Mark Doty
‘When I was seventeen, a freshman in college living in my parents’ house, I met Ruth at a poetry reading.’
Tokyo Island
Natsuo Kirino
‘The lottery to choose her next husband was to take place at the Imperial Palace.’
Rousseau and the Pussycat
Marie Darrieussecq
‘I am aware that according to present-day criteria, the story I am about to tell contains several shocking scenes which fall within the realms of sexual harassment and cruelty towards animals.’
The Fig Tree and the Wasp
Brian Chikwava
‘The day I first saw the dance was the day we had expected to end with the execution of my maternal grandfather.’
Zeppelin
Herta Müller
‘This Zeppelin may not float high and silver in the sky, but it does set your mind adrift.’
Bianca Burning
C.K. Williams
‘The sexual terror lions are roaring into my ears as I make my way between their cages’
Four Mammals Contemplating Sex
Dave Eggers
Image 1 of 4 Bespectacled Bear, 12 January 2010, 4.51 p.m. Image 2 of 4...
Roseland
Rebecca Lenkiewicz
‘I’m twenty-one. On a Greyhound bus going from New York to San Francisco.’
This is for You
Emmanuel Carrère
‘I have a proposition for you. From this moment on, you will do everything I tell you to do.’
Park Life
Rupert Thomson
‘As the weeks went by, I began to realize that the park had its own unofficial and carefully calibrated infrastructure.’
The Agony of Intimacy
Jeanette Winterson
‘We all knew that about the gods – that they were total sex.’
Translating Sex
Natasha Wimmer & Ollie Brock
‘I won’t say that the mood of a scene doesn’t affect me, but I’m not the translating equivalent of a Method actor.’
