Swimming Underwater
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Kseniya Melnik | Five Things Right Now
Kseniya Melnik
Kseniya Melnik, chosen in 2010 as a Granta New Voice, shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
Two Poems
Tomaž Šalamun
‘Heads of saints fell off and / smashed the glassy cages. My voice smashed them.’
Sasayama
Nadifa Mohamed
‘It was in one of those listless summers after graduation that I found myself in the small Japanese town of Sasayama.’
Once Was Dark
Josh Weil
‘When he opened his eyes, she was looking out at the rooster, the sun-blasted concrete, the railing thinned to brittle by the brightness.’
Einstein on the Beach
Hugh Seidman
‘So many thugs in any century how crush them all? / All passports stamped for the underworld’
Rainbow
Taisuke Koyama & Ivan Vartanian
‘I now see Melting Rainbows as a self-referential project to parse the universe which we inhabit.’
Smartening Up
Aoko Matsuda
‘‘Let’s become monsters together,’ she said, looking straight into my eyes.’
Interview: Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine & Francisco Vilhena
Adrian Tomine is an artist and illustrator. He is most well-known for his New Yorker...
Five Things Right Now: Daisuke Yokota
Daisuke Yokota
Photographer Daisuke Yokota shares five links of what he’s reading, watching, thinking about and loving right now.
Motoyuki Shibata | Interview
Motoyuki Shibata & Fran Bigman
‘I always think the borderline between reality and non-reality, or fantasy, is much thinner in Japanese fiction than in American or British fiction.’
Bucket of Eels
Mitsuyo Kakuta
‘I was gazing into my empty bowl and realizing how little time it takes to eat when you’re not carrying on a conversation.’
Three Poems
Sakutarō Hagiwara
‘What I do not have is Everything: / how is it that I won’t bear this neediness?’
Three Japanese Books
Samantha Harvey, Phil Klay & Tao Lin
‘Each word is a snowflake falling, and with each paragraph the snow settles deeper.’
David Peace and Kyoko Nakajima in Conversation
Kyoko Nakajima & David Peace
‘When we talk about history, the dangers of embellishment, fabrication and wilful distortion are ever-present’
Hiromi Kawakami | Podcast
Hiromi Kawakami, Anne Meadows & Asa Yoneda
‘Looking back, I never was aware of feeling that close to death, but actually if you think about it, just living every day there is a very small but definitely existing chance of death, whatever you're doing, wherever you are.’
Toh EnJoe | First Sentence
Toh EnJoe
‘I think that the thing called thought can be viewed as rooted in the very real phenomenon of neurons firing.’
The Bees that Disappeared
Keiichiro Hirano
‘It was during this period that I got to know K, one of the local mailmen.’
Akhil Sharma | Five Things Right Now
Akhil Sharma
Akhil Sharma, a Granta Best Young American Novelist and author of new novel Family Life, shares five things he’s reading, watching and thinking about.
The Casualties
Katie Kitamura
‘The following are some of the Japanese players who also appeared in the major leagues during the Age of Ichiro.’
Silver Threads
Greg Alan Brownderville & Zach Savich
‘Time trapped me in this canyon, this dark jar — / jabbed holes in the sky to spare me light and air.’
The Power of a Grandmother Named Tranquilina
Valerie Miles
'Never underestimate the power of a grandmother to leave her mark on coming generations, or the taste of her cooking to cause an epiphany big enough to give the world a shiver.'
Filling Up With Sugar
Yuten Sawanishi
‘The vagina was the first part of her mother’s body that turned to sugar.’
A Clean Marriage
Sayaka Murata
‘Frequency of sex since marriage: zero.’
Sayaka Murata on a sexless marriage and the ‘Clean Breeder’ technique for pleasureless reproduction.
Breakfast
Toshiki Okada
‘If I had known she were heading for Tokyo then, and if I had known she thought of Tokyo as a city of zombies, I would have wanted to know, of course, whether she saw me that way, too.’
Things Remembered and Things Forgotten
Kyoko Nakajima
It was something Takashi remembered but Masaru had forgotten.
Final Fantasy III
Tao Lin
‘On the F train to Manhattan I emailed a friend in the UK. I said I couldn’t write my essay about Japan.’
Blue Moon
Hiromi Kawakami
‘Rather than death itself, it is the disappearance of traces that seems unbearable and sad. The disappearance of all signs that I existed.’
The Japanese Firefly Squid
Kimiko Hahn
‘nothing like an ancient corridor where a / woman is stripped of resistance.’
