Two Girls in a Boat
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An Ofrenda for my Mother
Sandra Cisneros
‘She was a prisoner-of-war mother, banging on the bars of her cell all her life.’
Easter Island Noodles Almondine
Thom Jones
‘I grew up in a factory town, Aurora, Illinois, some forty miles west of Chicago.’
Domp-Domp
Ben Ratliff
‘There’s Bo Diddley. Big hips, pointy shoes, glasses. A gap between his teeth, and a bow tie, in 1965.’
Parrot
Peter Carey
‘You might think, who is this, and I might say, this is God, and what are you to do?’
Paul Auster | Interview
Paul Auster
Paul Auster discusses his new novel ‘Invisible’, his writing process and the unsettling quality of narrative clarity.
Are We Related?
Liz Jobey
‘Most family relationships are difficult, and sometimes they can become the most difficult human relationships of all.’
Cambodia’s Quest for Peace
Elena Lesley & Joel Rozen
Photographs accompanying Elena Lesley’s dispatch from Cambodia.
Truth and Reconciliation
Elena Lesley
‘‘Only the spirit of the earth knows where the soul has gone,’ Bou said of his lost wife, ‘or where the bodies are buried’.’
Garibaldi
Jeffrey Rotter
‘He chopped his way down North La Salle, pared the night air as he strolled along West Eugenie, peeled and julienned until at last he’d reached the dogleg at Sedgwick and Menomonee.’
Chicago’s South Side 1946–1948
Wayne Miller
‘Miller’s images collected in Chicago’s South Side reflect the enormous variety of human experiences and emotions that occurred at a unique time and place in the American landscape.’
Wrestling with Translation
Jeffrey Yang
‘As I embarked on my adventure I immediately started to feel that old hatred for simplified Chinese characters.’
Maria Venegas | Interview
Maria Venegas
Maria Venegas discusses ‘Bullet Proof Vest’, her essay from Granta 108: ‘Chicago’ about her criminal father, who ‘shot a man when he was twelve years old’.
Dinaw Mengestu | Interview
Dinaw Mengestu
Dinaw Mengestu talks about how he came to write ‘Big Money’, his contribution to Granta 108, his forthcoming novel, his relationship with his hometown, Chicago, and his inspiration as a writer.
Leaving Chi-town
Bruce Olds
‘It will sound odd, but it was as if the city was calling me back, back to a place I never had lived.’
Writing Chicago
Aleksandar Hemon & Stuart Dybek
Aleksandar Hemon and Stuart Dybek on the energy and inspiration of Chicago, its exhilirating ‘incompleteness’, and the ‘unique perspectives of seeing the city’.
Midnight on Lake Michigan
Diego Báez
‘But really, your disappearance / has never been a question of whether.’
Two-Part Inventions
Anne Winters
‘The same way Bach’s motive splays out to the right, / swoons flatly, swans it, footnotes, follows up, / talks to itself, purls, mutters, dawdles, resumes. . .’
What is Chicago
Lawrence Joseph
‘For all its buildings and skyscrapers and sprawl, Chicago is still a part of, and as open as, the prairies. The lake, ocean-like, is flat and utterly exposed.’
Walker Brothers
Peter Orner
‘When Allen Dorfman was gunned down in the parking lot of the purple Hyatt in Lincolnwood, my grandfather took great pride in the fact that one of our own was still high enough in the mob to rub out.’
Peter Carey | Interview
Peter Carey
Peter Carey on Alexis de Tocqueville, writing fiction and the inspiration for his forthcoming novel.
A Bar on North Avenue
Roger Ebert
‘We regulars knew each other. We dated each other. We slept with each other.’
Introducing Chicago
John Freeman
John Freeman introduces Granta’s new issue, celebrating the city of Chicago, a cultural and artistic hub and home to some of the world’s greatest writers and thinkers.
After Lockerbie
George Rosie
‘I’ve seen many images from the Lockerbie calamity since but none has stayed with me like the picture of Shannon’s pretty, smiling face.’
The Sweetmaker of Kabul
Oliver Englehart
‘The Mandayee bazaar in Kabul’s old city is no tourist souk. Stop to gawp at some oddity of life here and you might be trampled under the mucky wheels of an overladen handcart.’
Only Connect
Anita Sethi
‘The performativity of the experience is in some respects akin to watching real-life television; an unfolding soap opera in which the players are not fictional.’
An Education
Lynn Barber
‘The whole meeting seemed completely unreal but then everything at that time seemed unreal, so I said ‘Yes, by all means make the film,’ and went back to the hospital and forgot about her.’
