Granta | The Home of New Writing

Leaving Gotham City

1964

Robin Robertson

Under the gritted lid of winter, each ice-puddle’s broken plate cracked to a star. The...

Two Poems

Jack Underwood

‘We are nearing the conclusion of this anatomy. / We are strung between the point of ending, and / the point of having started.’

To Zagreb

Yoko Tawada

‘You didn’t know where you wanted to end up, had never considered how much time you had left.’

Poor Lucky Kolyvanova

Ludmila Ulitskaya

‘The red girls’ school stood opposite a grey boys’ school, built five years after it as if to proclaim the rational symmetry of the world.’

Five Things Right Now: Caroline Lucas

Caroline Lucas

Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP and author of Honorable Friends?, shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about.

Enzo Ponza

Joanna Walsh

‘I was still quite a small girl when I decided to kidnap Enzo Ponza.’

Pause

Mary Ruefle

‘Nothing can prepare you for this.’

Mary Ruefle on menopause.

A Woman’s Worth

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan on the evolution of feminist judgments in India.

A Numbered Graph That Shows How Each Part of the Body Would Fit Into A Chair

Mary Jo Bang

‘It’s a simple truth that one can occupy two / places at one time while sitting in a chair—the same way a / poseable doll can be divided from her dress.’

In Conversation: Pankaj Mishra and Aman Sethi

Pankaj Mishra & Aman Sethi

‘It is India’s turn to undergo social traumas that other countries have suffered in their pursuit of wealth and power.’

From The Abstract Humanities

Sandra Simonds

‘let us / build the openwork fabric of our garden / on the fear in the body’

Numb

Lauren Schenkman

‘She felt things under the skin: scars where the body had torn during childbirth, clumps of cellulite, lobules and ducts.’

Every Person’s Little Treasure

Liliana Heker

‘It occurred to Ana that this was a woman who often left things hanging.’

Five Things Right Now: Valeria Luiselli

Valeria Luiselli

Valeria Luiselli, published her most recent novel, The Story of My Teeth, last month. She shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.

A Brief Guide to Gender in India

Minal Hajratwala

‘Please be creative. This is only the beginning.’

Light

Lesley Nneka Arimah

‘When Enebeli Okwara sent his girl out in the world, he did not know what the world did to daughters.’ 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize – regional winner for Africa.

Famished Eels

Mary Rokonadravu

‘After one hundred years, this is what I have: a daguerreotype of her in bridal finery; a few stories told and retold in plantations, kitchens, hospitals, airport lounges.’

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

‘The pieces in this issue of Granta are all concerned, in one way or another, with the difference between the world as we see it and the world as it actually is, beyond our faulty memories and tired understanding.’

The Gentlest Village

Jesse Ball

‘You are learning – learning a great deal. It is too much for you, so your body bows out. Then you wake up and you can continue.’

Position Paper

John Ashbery

‘This is my outfit. / Government spooks did the rest. Didn’t you know?’

Life and Breasts

Ludmila Ulitskaya

‘Death is here, by our side, and we can make no witty Nabokovian jokes about it.’

Dreamed in Stone

Jon Fosse

‘You were a chasm that cracked and turned into stones, and then the stones lay there, beautifully laid, in a wall.’

Her Lousy Shoes

Tracy O’Neill

‘On good days, he could believe that that was exactly what he appeared to be: pedestrian, a pedestrian, a walker, walking, going places, on the ups, possessing two healthy feet at least.’

It was discovered that gut bacteria were responsible

Kathryn Maris

‘this dream that might have been pleasant for an / 8-year-old could instead emerge as a nightmare for a woman / on the brink of menopause’

The Florida Motel

Kevin Canty

‘Suddenly she understood what she was doing here. She was among strangers, the place where Bill had chosen to spend his life.’

Traces II

Ian Teh

‘I am interested in the dissonance created between the ambivalent images and the historical, economic and scientific narrative that accompanies them.’

Mother’s House

Raja Shehadeh

‘It was her last service, last sacrifice, to a husband who required so much from her throughout their life together. But we could not succeed.’

After Zero Hour

Janine di Giovanni

‘It seemed there was a little piece of Iraqi earth inside me that refused to let me go.’

Observatoires

Noémie Goudal

In her series Observatoires, Noémie Goudal places stairs, pyramids and domes in natural, isolated, timeless spaces.

The Battle for Kessab

Charles Glass

‘No Armenian can forget 1915.’

Release the Darkness to New Lichen

Peter Gizzi

‘was it wind or a creature / am I here or is it over’

Nothing Ever Happens Here

Ottessa Moshfegh

‘I was broke, and I was a nobody, but I was happy.’

Krapp Hour (Act 2)

Anne Carson

‘this is my theory of her awake all night worrying about little wild animals active in the dark’

The second instalment of Anne Carson’s fictional TV show.

The Archive

Sebastià Jovani

‘The aim of this study is to visualise a means of understanding the essential aspects of a literary text.’

The Buzzard’s Egg

China Miéville

‘I can’t remember: did a young man destroy his miserable god, or did a god free its worshipper and take his blood and his bones?’

Model Reconstruction of Ancient Rome

Sandra Simonds

‘Here I am. Sephora, symbol of stolen work.’