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Notes on Craft
Paul Dalla Rosa
‘I feel like I’m haunting an empty building, inert, waiting for each room to burst into flames.’
The Restaurant of Many Orders
Kenji Miyazawa
‘Two young gentlemen dressed just like British military men, with gleaming guns on their shoulders and two dogs like great white bears at their heels, were walking in the mountains where the leaves rustled dry underfoot.’
Slum Wolf
Tadao Tsuge
‘It was a red-light district and a plywood market and a town of hoodlums in one. I’ll add one more thing: The whole place stunk of sewage.’
After
April Ayers Lawson
‘I again told him I wasn’t ready to have sex, and his only response was to lean in and kiss me. The hallway in which we walked seemed to be shrinking, closing in on us.’ – April Ayers Lawson on intimacy after sexual abuse.
Every Day Was Ordinary
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
‘A life is an open thing / leaking out into / the air around it.’
Hot Rain
Terese Svoboda
A new story from Terese Svoboda about love, money and power in the hands of an aging parent.
Five Poems
Irene Solà
‘I wore off my tongue / like candy’ Translated from the Catalan by Oscar Holloway.
A Few Words about Fake Breasts
Nell Boeschenstein
‘You repeat this over and over. You pinch your nipples harder. Then harder and harder still. You twist them. You dare them to say Mercy. You stare into your own eyes that are watching you from the mirror.’
A Summer of Japanese Literature
Dan Bradley
From manga to crime fiction, contemporary literature to Nobel-Prize-winning classics, here are ten works of Japanese literature worth spending your summer on
How Much Heart
Mieko Kawakami
A triptych of flash fiction by Mieko Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by David Boyd.
Murasaki’s Paper Trail
Martin Puchner
Martin Puchner on how Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting at the Japanese court, manage to write the first great novel of world literature.
Fred Pearce | Notes on Craft
Fred Pearce
‘For a hack like me, book-length meta-journalism is both a luxury and a challenge. I cannot hide my own views over 100,000 words, even if I want to.’
Introduction
Sigrid Rausing
Editor and publisher Sigrid Rausing introduces Granta 144: genericlovestory.
I Bite My Friends
Fernanda Eberstadt
‘The Easter Parade is winding down, when I spot Him. Her. Them. The Apparition.’
Women Talking
Miriam Toews
‘When we have liberated ourselves, we will have to ask ourselves who we are.’
On Paris Hilton and Other Undead Things
Brittany Newell
‘What sex tapes offer, on a hauntological level, is an impossible closeness to that which is neither dead nor alive.’
Though I Have Never Been to Ostia, I Have Seen the Place Where Our Dreams Died
Momtaza Mehri
‘like pasolini’s dream of an african oresteia let us be ridiculous’
Telling My Story
Stella Duffy
‘I wonder if they could all smell the queer on me, the queer in me, the burgeoning sexuality that I had no words for at the time.’
Cross-Dressers
Sébastien Lifshitz & Andrew McMillan
‘These images appear to give a glimpse of a ghost-self, a photographic negative of the heart.’ Andrew McMillan introduces photography curated by Sébastien Lifshitz.
Normal People
Sally Rooney
‘After the first time they had sex, Marianne stayed the night in his house.’ New fiction from Sally Rooney.
Comme
Paul Dalla Rosa
‘Because I spent a large amount of time convincing people to buy clothing they would never actually wear, it was easy to convince myself the same.’
I’ve Seen the Future, Baby; It Is Murder
Tara Isabella Burton
‘It was not very comfortable, but the appeal of it was that we did not like each other.’
Zeus
Fiona Benson
‘days I talked with Zeus / I ate only ice / felt the blood trouble and burn / under my skin’
Abscessed Tooth
Debra Gwartney
‘Silence allows me to pretend that this happened to someone else a long time ago, and not to me.’
Chameleon
Tomoko Sawada & Sayaka Murata
‘If Sawada can transform herself without limit, maybe I can too.’ Sayaka Murata introduces Tomoko Sawada’s photographs, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori.
See What You Do to Me
TaraShea Nesbit
‘My intention was to protect myself, and not to have to go back on my word.’
Jailbait
Ottessa Moshfegh
‘Part of what made him interesting was that I felt he would dismiss me the moment I bored him.’
That
Leni Zumas
‘Members of the committee, I am bitter, it’s true. But this doesn’t change the facts.’
Biscotti Boys / On Men Who Wear Living as Loosely as Their Suits
Momtaza Mehri
‘salmaan the second son & his mama’s seventh seal by way of underwater & underemployment’
What Do Women Want?
Devorah Baum
‘What we’re arguing about turns out to be how to speak to each other at all.’
What Silence Knows
Anthony Shadid
‘Words can’t quite re-create the smell of war. I have found myself trying to wash it out of my hair, off my fingers. More than once, I have run water over the soles of my shoes.’
