Wild Failure
Sort by:
I come from a place on your bucket list
Deepti Kapoor
Deepti Kapoor on travel, authenticity and the peculiarity of being Indian in Uganda.
George Saunders In Conversation | Podcast
George Saunders
A discussion of the mind of Abraham Lincoln, the art of creating historical voices, verbal improv and writing the afterlife.
Elif Batuman | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Elif Batuman
‘The power imbalance built into travel writing is just a heightened version of an imbalance that’s there in all writing.’
Same-same but different | Discoveries
Ka Bradley
This week’s Discoveries features translation in all its many articulations.
Yet Trouble Came
Phillip Lewis
Phillip Lewis on writing emotional autobiography. ‘A sincere observation followed by a sincere utterance is the most powerful and effective form of communication.’
The Bonds of Trauma
Daniel Magariel
‘An often-unacknowledged truth about families that deal with addiction is that the bonds of trauma can be as challenging to quit as the habit itself.’
Sarah Gerard | Five Things Right Now
Sarah Gerard
Sarah Gerard on Leonora Carrington, shoegaze music and gaslighting.
Sick of Steel
Gus Palmer & Emilie Harley
Tamburi sits in the shadow of one of Europe’s largest steel plants. The pollution is giving the locals cancer.
Borne
Jeff VanderMeer
‘The map of the old horizon was like being haunted by a grotesque fairy tale, something that when voiced came out not as words but as sounds in the aftermath of an atrocity.’
The Unmailed Letter
Kseniya Melnik
‘I was already suspicious of you before you were even born. You were Mama’s then, eating her up from the inside like a little cancer. She became yellow. She lost chunkfuls of hair.’
Morwari Zafar | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Morwari Zafar
‘What satellites and the internet don’t do is give a voice to experience. And that’s where travel writing endures.’
The Back Way and the Way Back
Will Boast
Despite emerging from two decades of misrule under Yahya Jammeh, many Gambians still aspire to go ‘the back way’ into Europe.
hardcore thigh burn | Discoveries
Eleanor Chandler
This week’s Discoveries is full of rad poetry, translations and criticism.
Two Poems
Pascale Petit
‘His sheets smell of formalin. / She feels as if her insides // are outside her, in a freezer.’
Sara Wheeler | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Sara Wheeler
‘Mass travel has liberated the form. No amount of package tours will stop ordinary life quietly continuing everywhere on earth.’
Sana Krasikov and Viv Groskop In Conversation
Sana Krasikov & Viv Groskop
Sana Krasikov and Viv Groskop discuss the Soviet experience, the rise of mass cynicism and the politics of Russia and the US today.
Fourth Person Singular
Nuar Alsadir
‘The wet in the air is like signal anxiety: life is about to / change.’
Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead
Olga Tokarczuk
‘They gazed at us calmly, as if we had caught them in the middle of performing some ritual whose meaning we could not fathom.’
Forbidden Games
Tia Wallman
‘We do not understand why, nor did we covet such long life, but here we are, our respective addictions and madness with us to the end.’
Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders
‘Must I deny my predilection, and marry, and doom myself to a certain, shall we say, dearth of fulfillment?’
Cats Explain Things to Me | Discoveries
Typo
Take a paws from your busy day for this week’s Discoveries – guest edited by Granta’s very own Typo the cat.
Qualitative Leaps
Sana Krasikov
‘Breaking your family’s heart was the price you paid for rescuing your own.’
Wendell Steavenson | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Wendell Steavenson
‘Our globalised world of easyJet and Google Translate does not seem to have fostered any greater understanding’
Sana Krasikov | Five Things Right Now
Sana Krasikov
‘The world is teeming with demons who are always looking for ways to screw with your good fortune.’
The Secular World
Nadeem Aslam
‘There is no lack of talent in this country. All we lack is decent leaders.’ Pakistan’s secular world runs against fundamentalism in Nadeem Aslam’s latest novel, The Golden Legend.
Better Protect America
Padma Viswanathan
Padma Viswanathan on the absurdities of the US Border Patrol Agency. ‘The new security was going to be unpredictable, by design.’
Olivia Laing | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Olivia Laing
‘Which bodies can go where might be the central question of our century.’
F. Scott Fitzgerald Reads John Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’
Luke Neima
Not long before he died on 21 December 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald recorded himself reading a version of John Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.
