Granta | The Home of New Writing

The Woman Dies

Salvage

Reynaldo Rivera & Chris Kraus

‘Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Reynaldo photographed his world, a world that no longer exists in LA.’ Photographs by Reynaldo Rivera, introduced by Chris Kraus.

The Recall of Herman Harcourt

Colin Grant

‘I had the queer feeling of looking into a mirror of the projected future, of perhaps seeing how easily his fall could be a rehearsal for my own.’

Cyprus United

Joe Dunthorne

‘The idea that football might provide an opportunity to overcome our dumber instincts seemed ridiculous now: football was a chance to set our idiocy free.’

Monster | State of Mind

Margo Jefferson

‘Today’s a day for you to feel blocked and impeded; a coward in work and love; resenting duty; suspecting pleasure.’

Coming Home to the Counter-Revolution

Jack Shenker

‘My Cairo is an inverted city, one that wears its innards above the skin.’

Mistaken | State of Mind

Mary Ruefle

‘I take it, if only as a substitute for my unknown name’

Imagined Memories

Francesca Todde & Nuar Alsadir

‘The creation of a screen memory is an encoding process: the screen retains all that is important from the past, but in encrypted form.’ Nuar Alsadir introduces the photographs of Francesca Todde.

Saint Ivo

Joanna Hershon

‘This is where my imagination had gone: frittered away on longing and regret, just like everybody else.’

Gay and Depressed | State of Mind

Andrew Solomon

‘It would be a bit more tolerable if we lived in a society that didn’t blame depression on its victims.’

You Guys

Ocean Vuong

‘I’m too tired she said / to be this happy / & we laughed without / moving our hands’

Flash at Home

Robert Coover

‘Flash Gordon, home from the terrible emptiness of space, has to make up stories for fear of worldwide despair.’

Brother | State of Mind

Max Porter

‘We don’t often talk seriously or in depth about our childhood these days, but we know we could, and we know what good it did us.’

The Alarming Palsy of James Orr

Tom Lee

‘As it was, this gave the impression of two different faces, two different people, welded savagely together.’

Chère Madame

Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust’s letters to his neighbour, translated from the French by Lydia Davis.

Books Do Furnish a Room

Penelope Lively

‘The shelves say something about the person who has stocked them; they say much.’

Threshold | State of Mind

Barry Lopez

‘What we’re about to see is greater than the thing you’re running from.’

Past Perfect

Jason Larkin

‘Museums are not solely concerned with objects and our collective past, but also with ideas; notions of what the world is, or should be.’

White | State of Mind

Han Kang

‘I was told that she was a girl, with a face as white as a crescent-moon rice cake.’

Fiction by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith.

a style

Dara Wier

‘a style says conviction in indifference / conviction in style’

Mark Doten | Five Things Right Now

Mark Doten

‘Is there any doubt that Proust would have been obsessed with the Internet?’

The Peripatetic Penelope Fitzgerald

Lucy Scholes

Lucy Scholes on the highs, lows and package tours of Booker-prize-winning author Penelope Fitzgerald. ‘Fitzgerald’s life can only be attributed to the caprices of fate.’

Relinquish

Kazim Ali

‘I haven’t learned very much in my life, I’ve just become a more / Choreographed disaster’

Dead in Venice

Masahiko Shimada

‘If I wasn’t a fish spawned in the Brenta river, why was I so compelled to keep returning?’ Masahiko Shimada on his many trips to Venice.

From the Left Bank of the Flu

Misumi Kubo

‘The big road looked to me like a river, the cars rushing by as if carried along on its current.’

American Objects

Lucy Ives

‘My eyes were way too large. They appeared, if this is possible, independently scandalized.’

How to Fight Climate Change

James Thornton & Martin Goodman

A discussion of the environmental pratfalls of Brexit and the Trump presidency, and how judicial action is best used in the fight against climate change.

Margo Jefferson Reads Kathleen Collins | Podcast

Margo Jefferson & Kathleen Collins

Margo Jefferson reads ‘The Uncle’ by Kathleen Collins, taken from the story collection, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?

Fat Time

Jeffery Renard Allen

‘Six feet of man, muscled up perfect, game to the heart.’ New fiction from Jeffery Renard Allen.

My Heart Hemmed In

Marie NDiaye

‘I stagger from the shock. I feel the corners of my mouth turning down. My jaw begins to tremble. Yes, yes, yes, I say to myself, get ahold of yourself.’

The Perfect Choice

Fleur Jaeggy

‘There are those who have an inborn gift for not being deceived in life.’ Translated from the Italian by Gini Alhadeff.

Talking Italish

Antonio Melechi

‘For my mother and father, the past and present had both become foreign countries.’

The Farm

Nicola Barker

‘Yes. Oh yes. That is who we once were. The Young must never, ever allow themselves to ignore what has brought them here.’

You Okay for Time?

Kaori Fujino

‘She wants to talk, she wants to unburden herself, but there’s nothing left so all she can do is cry.’ Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori.

Three Poems

Karen McCarthy Woolf

‘May it not be / that they owe their fleshiness / to the cumulative effect?’

The Myth of Creative Genius

Natasha Pulley

‘There’s a mysticism that surrounds writing fiction.’