Acts of Infidelity
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Victim Politics
Ben Rawlence
‘The push and pull of identity politics is the child of slavery and empire.’ Ben Rawlence on empire and the construction of white identity.
Armadillo Man
Julianne Pachico
‘The Armadillo Man is watching her. She gives him a good show – the best she has to offer.’
The False Lords of Misrule
Peter Pomerantsev
Peter Pomerantsev takes us on a tour of the lewd, crude language of modern politics – from Trump to Putin to Duterte, Milo Yianopoulos, Boris Johnson and more.
The Passing of the Contemplative Life
D. Ptryrczwz
‘she was not among those / I’d expected I might meet’
The Comrades and I
Mona Abouissa
Mona Abouissa on her experiences with Egyptian communists, and the role they played in Egypt before 1952, when they were excised from official history.
Maureen N. McLane in Conversation
Maureen N. McLane & Rachael Allen
Granta’s poetry editor Rachael Allen talks to Maureen N. McLane about ecology, lyric authority, and balancing poetry with criticism.
4 3 2 1: Overture
Paul Auster
‘According to family legend, Ferguson’s grandfather departed on foot from his native city of Minsk with one hundred rubles sewn into the lining of his jacket’
An extract from 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster.
The Island
Jack Underwood
‘She draws from her mind the image of a giant steel girder, pictures it smashing through the wall of the bar, obliterating everything, legs and arms reaching and waving.’
Night of the Gnomes
J.R. Wilcock
‘The plan was quite simple: Güendolina would invite him into the bedroom and persuade him to make love to her until he was utterly exhausted.’
Spiders from Jerusalem
Wioletta Greg
‘When the Holy Family was fleeing from Jerusalem, spiders wove such a thick web around the road that the swords of Herod’s soldiers couldn’t pierce it.’
Two Poems
Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo
‘Fingers twirl / composite stems whose colour / twist rock-candies, snake-ladders / precious yellow, less-rare green.’
Three Friends in a Hammock
April Ayers Lawson
‘I could not decide if love was real as a thing or something that could never entirely be proven, like God’
Best Book of 1818: The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, by E.T.A. Hoffmann
Luke Neima
‘What sets Hoffmann’s work apart is the meeting of the joint impulses of Enlightenment and Romantic thought’
Best Book of 1982: Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Eleanor Chandler
‘While the terrible pain of speech is made clear, this book ultimately reminds us that we must not be silenced.’
Best Book of 1950: A Natural History of Trees by Donald Culross Peattie
James Pogue
‘Now more than ever environmentalists need to remember what it’s like to write for that real world.’
Best Book of 2016: Joanne Kyger’s On Time
Hoa Nguyen
Hoa Nguyen on why Joanne Kyger’s On Time is the best book of 2016.
Best Book of 2015: Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo
Valerie Miles
‘Time is a rubber band, and in a single sentence, ghosts and alternative worlds superimpose’
Best Book of 1868: Dostoevsky’s The Idiot
Laurie Sheck
‘The beauty of The Idiot lies in its opposition to closed systems.’
Best Book of 1971: Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann
Kevin Breathnach
‘The novel submits to an internalized discipline: it is an observation machine’
Best Book of 1926: Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel
Sun Yisheng
His is a force more penetrative than all the bogus machismo of Hemingway.
Best Book of 2010: Mr Chartwell, by Rebecca Hunt
Emma Jane Unsworth
‘Hunt writes with brio, the visceral often blooming into the mystical.’
Best Book of 2013: When the World Became White by Dalia Betolin-Sherman
Mira Rashty
‘New poetic expressions can still emerge and evolve in Hebrew – an ancient and almost prehistoric language, with its grumbling sound’
Best Book of 1967: A Touch of Mistletoe by Barbara Comyns
Camilla Grudova
‘I bought my copy for a few dollars from a second hand bookshop so stuffy I often faint on the doorstep after browsing inside, my hands swollen and red from dust mites.’
Best Book of 1766: Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling
Dave Haysom
Dave Haysom on why Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling is the best book of 1766.
Best Book of 1900: The Autobiography of Dr William Henry Johnson
Jennifer Kabat
‘Johnson is now a ghost of history; he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, but I can’t let him disappear.’
Best Book of 2008: To the End of the Land, by David Grossman
Lily Dunn
‘David Grossman is a writer who speaks to the heart, and this is his masterpiece.’
Sweet William: A Memoir of Old Horse, by John Hawkes | Best Book of 1993
Linda H. Davis
‘Plunged inside the skin of the horse, I felt his sensory burdens, sufferings and fears: his keen sensitivity to sound, smell and touch (even the weight of a saddle)’
Best Book of 2000: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
Anne Meadows
‘It is the novel I have read which best expresses the honest and sad truth of art: that it is often produced in precarity and performed in near silence, but that it can also redeem a life.’
Best Book of 2008: Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Mika Taylor
‘Rivka Galchen’s debut novel is one of my favourites from the last few years.’
Best Book of 1943: Love In A Fallen City by Eileen Chang
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
‘Eileen Chang writes perfectly for the romantic in an unromantic and unrelenting world.’
