The Witch’s Dog
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The Congo Dinosaur
Redmond O’Hanlon
‘The boy lay stretched out on a low wooden platform under an orange tree.’
The Pathology Lesson
Michael Dibdin
‘The autopsy is complete. I thank the pathologist, who thanks me for coming. We both thank the assistant, who in turn thanks us. It is all very polite, very English. You almost expect the cadavers to add their thanks as well.’
Spring Break at Daytona Beach
Mary Ellen Mark
Mary Ellen Mark’s photographs of spring break at Daytona Beach in Granta 39: The Body.
The Cells, Tissues, Systems and Cavities of the Body
Jeanette Winterson
‘You were a coat of many colours wrestled into the dirt.’
My Mother’s Eyes
Todd McEwen
‘My mother has a small brown book, the kind of notebook made of alligators and sold to wealthy people who do not make notes.’
Teeth
Giorgio Pressburger
‘One day in January a tall thin man with long white hair came into our courtyard. He was draped in a green cloak, torn in various places.’
Wild Women, Wild Men
Hanif Kureishi
‘When I saw them waiting beside their car, I said, ‘You must be freezing.’ It was cold and foggy, the first night of winter, and the two women had matching short skirts and skimpy tops; their legs were bare.’
Sideshow
Antonin Kratochvil
Antonin Kratochvil’s photographs of sideshow performers for Granta 39: The Body.
Red Fire Farm
Anchee Min
‘I arrived at Red Fire Farm – along with many other girls in ten large trucks – late one spring afternoon in 1974.’
The Internment
John Conroy
‘In a low-rent corner of Belfast's city centre is a district known as Smithfield, and on its main street there is a market, an anarchist bookshop, a public toilet and a bookmaker's called Stanley’s.’
The Dolphin of Amble
Peregrine Hodson
‘Once again the dolphin presented his body to my hand, slid by my fingers and turned over with a lazy splash.’
At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers
Salman Rushdie
‘The bidders who have assembled for the auction of the magic slippers bear little resemblance to your usual saleroom.’
Motorama 1954
Bill Morris
‘It was at sundown on New Year's Day 1954 that Claire Hathaway began to feel embarrassed by her new television set.’
Anatomy of a Cheeseburger
Jeremy Rifkin
‘Ray Kroc, one of the founders of the McDonald's hamburger chain, changed American eating habits as effectively as Henry Ford changed the way Americans travel.’
The Night of the Railwaymen’s Ball
Ivan Klíma
‘The season of ballroom dancing was upon us and crime was on the increase. I have little interest in ballroom dancing – I don't dance.’
The Adjuster
Tracy Kidder
’On the day my career at Fireplace Mutual began, six of us recruits filed into the smoke-filled office of the Supervisor of Adjusters, Mr Kreisky.’
Night Prayer
Louise Erdrich
‘It was hot and windy in the garden of Our Lady of the Wheat, but inside the convent it was worse.’
Philadelphia
Eugene Richards
‘The ‘War Zone’ in Philadelphia is just north of the centre, about a mile and a half from City Hall and across the Street from Temple University.’
Bears in Mourning
Adam Mars-Jones
‘When I think about it, it was terrible the way we behaved when Victor died. We behaved as if we were ashamed of him, or angry.’
Brazil
Sue Halpern
‘Water curls through the Fortaleza slum: sewer water. It drains between shacks made of sticks and mud, and is pretty when it catches the sun’.
Journals and Letters
Sappho Durrell
‘I can’t carry anyone else’s fears; I have enough to contend with of my own.’
Field Burning
William Wharton
‘I thought after what had happened to us in the past twenty-four hours I’d never be scared to die again, but I am.’
Ramadan
Mona Simpson
‘He took my left hand and banded a cleft rose petal over my third finger. I knew before looking in the book. ‘Marrying,’ he said. He’s so young, I was thinking.’
Alphabet City
Geoffrey Biddle
‘When I first worked here, the neighbourhood was not called Alphabet City. It was the Puerto Rican part of the Lower East Side and the Puerto Ricans called it Loisaida, low-ee-SIGH-da, a new York-Puerto Rican version of Lower East Side.’
The Law of White Spaces
Giorgio Pressburger
‘It was beginning to seem as if his brother’s fate depended on him, on his ability, or lack of it, to learn the prayer for the dead.’
Mothers, Daughters, Sons
Markéta Luskačová
Markéta Luskačová’s photographs of women and children for Granta 37: The Family.
Waterway
Geoffrey Wolff
‘You would not guess looking into my son's bedroom at home that Blackwing’s ice box would have been scrubbed, but it had been scrubbed.’
