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The Editor’s Chair: On Svetlana Alexievich
Jacques Testard
‘It is clear when reading Svetlana Alexievich that she has a deep empathy for the characters whose stories she tells.’
Three Stories
Andrés Ibáñez
‘The rabbits are gentle and timid – in fact, they behave as rabbits normally do – but nonetheless their size is troubling.’
Carys Davies | Notes on Craft
Carys Davies
‘All good stories are both resonant and concrete; they live in the mind of the reader and reverberate beyond the pages of the book.’
Painter to the King
Amy Sackville
This is an excerpt from Painter to the King, Amy Sackville's account of the life of Diego Velázquez. Now available from Granta Books.
The Leech Barometer
Rebecca Giggs
‘To be consumed by leeches is to be vital, to be animate, though it is also to be reminded you are something else’s prey, and therefore porous and mortal.’
Rosses Point
John Connell
‘I’m going to die out here he thought, I’m going to die trying to save this beast in front of my boy.’
Brother in Ice
Alicia Kopf
‘My brother is a man trapped in ice. He looks at us through it; he is there and he is not there.’
Terminus
Pedro Rosa Mendes
‘We hope that the copilot knows the terrain well. That his mask of youth conceals the face of a seasoned veteran of war. That he knows the minefields because he helped plant them.’
Walk Laramidia
Swati Rana
‘Imagine all the prodigal / People, hoping only to / Escape every human mistake.’
Kudos
Rachel Cusk
An extract from Kudos, the final novel in Rachel Cusk’s trilogy, following Outline and Transit.
Two Poems
Amy Key
‘She is luscious / and plump like marshmallow; part edible baby, / part nosy neighbour.’
In the Valley of Coachella
Susan Straight
Novelist Susan Straight and photographer Douglas McCulloh on the presidential streets of the ‘real’ Coachella
Who Killed Tolstoy?
Elif Batuman
‘I walked along the birch-lined alleys of Yasnaya Polyana, looking for clues. Snakes were swimming in the pond, making a rippling pattern. Everything here was a museum.’
Fishes and Dragons
Undinė Radzevičiūtė
An excerpt from ‘Fishes and Dragons’ a Lithuanian literary chinoiserie that addresses the interpretation by a European of Qing dynasty culture and art.
Pay for Your Words
Peter Pomerantsev
Peter Pomerantsev downloads his Facebook data. ‘We seem to be caught in a trap: the more we use a word, the more we will be charged for it.’
Danny Denton | Notes on Craft
Danny Denton
‘My tuppence on craft is this: as a writer, you must give your reader space to experience the world of your story (whatever form it takes)’
A Mischief of Rats
Joanna Kavenna
‘They slept curled together in a hammock, little scraps of fur, hearts beating madly.’ Joanna Kavenna on her pet rats, Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love.
The Great Israeli novel of War and Doubt
Anne Meadows
Granta editor Anne Meadows writes about Khirbet Khizeh, the great Israeli novel of war and doubt.
Khirbet Khizeh
S. Yizhar
‘No one knows how to wait like soldiers. There is no time or place that soldiers are not waiting and waiting.’
The one/many problem
Daisy Hildyard
‘Other creatures literally stop me breathing. There are so many of them, and only one of me.’ Daisy Hildyard writes about her research into the animal kingdom.
Kestrel
Cynan Jones
‘A kestrel is not domestic. The one time I tried affection the bird put his beak through my lip.’
Poppy
Caroline Criado Perez
'I never worried about my flat catching fire before Poppy came along.' Caroline Criado Perez on her pet Poppy.
It’s Only Skin
Lily Dunn
‘I knew what it was to be an object of desire, and to be submissive.’ Lily Dunn on being a painter's model as a girl.
About the Cover
Slinkachu & Daniela Silva
Slinkachu talked to our senior designer Daniela Silva about how he created the cover for Animalia.
Our Donald: A Sex Story
Ross Raisin
‘Ducks are very sexual creatures. Domestic ducks, unlike wild ones, are polygamous.’
Extinction
Sharmistha Mohanty
‘even more it was a wish for boundless spaces, a wish for the inexpressibly wide and broad, for the unharnessing of human life’ – New poetry by Sharmistha Mohanty.
A Time for Everything
Karl Ove Knausgaard
‘It can almost seem as if God was genuinely concerned about mankind.’ Translated by James Anderson.
Karl Ove Knausgaard | The Proust Questionnaire
Karl Ove Knausgaard
'What is your most unappealing habit? Maybe all the brain-like chewing gums I leave behind everywhere I work.'
Climb the Mountains
Apricot Irving
'Harm that comes through the hands of those we love must be wrestled with; it does not simply disappear.'
20/20
Tatyana Tolstaya
'I didn't start out a writer, and had no plans of becoming one.' Tatyana Tolstaya, translated from the Russian by Anya Migdal
The Wanderers
Guadalupe Nettel
'Childhood felt like a waiting room, a transitory phase between birth and the life we wanted.'
