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Granta Italy 3 | Interview

Best Book of 1993: To Live

Jianan Qian

Jianan Qian on why Yu Hua’s To Live is the best book of 1993.

Camelot

Caleb Klaces

‘A typical child feels dangerously.’ New fiction from Caleb Klaces.

Open Day

Benjamin Markovits

‘You can be sad and angry, you don’t have to choose, she told him.’

A new short story from one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.

Best Book of 1982: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

Beth Gardiner

Beth Gardiner on why volume one of Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson series is the best book of 1982.

Mushroom

Rob Doyle

Foraging for the infamous liberty cap mushroom in Dublin.

‘At the root of my interest in both drugs and art was the longing for an encounter with otherness.’

Eleventh of October

Davide Enia

‘Many people – many nations – can find themselves believing, more or less consciously, that...

On Europe | Peter Stamm

Peter Stamm

Peter Stamm on the Swiss referendum to join the EU. Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann.

The Strange Story of the World

Chigozie Obioma

‘Mama leaving home with my brother Folu was the last straw, the final stage in the process of Papa’s descent into that great darkness.’ New fiction from Chigozie Obioma.

Glimpses of a totally different system

William Ghosh

‘This old circuit, which had been partly dormant, connected to an earlier memory. It was warm and fizzy and sharp. Then he stepped away, and the current was broken.’

A Language of Figs

Sema Kaygusuz

Sema Kaygusuz on the inheritances of genocide and historical memory, and what her own grandmother, a survivor of the Dersim Massacre in Turkey, taught her about life and language.

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

‘Somewhere in-between is the truth. Somewhere in-between is the story, or at least the European story.’

The Taste of the Feeling

Peter Mishler

‘Shy yet contemptible object / in an unleaking vial collected.’

Maly Trostinets

Joseph Leo Koerner

‘It was also mainly Viennese Jews who, between 6 May and 10 October 1942, were murdered in Maly Trostinets. Tens of thousands of Jews from elsewhere died there too, together with Soviet soldiers, Belarusian citizens, both Jewish and Christian, and partisans.’

Tom McCarthy | On Europe

Tom McCarthy

‘Like theatre itself, Europe is a contraption, a machine.’

Our Home Is Mortal Too

Katherine Angel

Katherine Angel on Stromae and Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium.

Office of Lost Moments

Antonio Muñoz Molina

‘I walk, or I ride the subway. All my worries and obsessions are dissolved in ceaseless observation.’ Translated from the Spanish by Guillermo Bleichmar.

Refuge

Bruno Fert & Nam Le

‘This series showcases a more intimate kind of human absence.’ Nam Le introduces the photographs of Bruno Fert.

Visitors Rev. 4

Anne Carson

‘I descend to confront – a visitor! After the jam? I think so. Or the gin.’

Alicja Gescinska | On Europe

Alicja Gescinska

‘Europe has proved to be at its best when it embraced unity in diversity.’

We Do Not Know Each Other

Lara Feigel

‘Is that what family is for? Helping you to understand what formed you?’

Ludmila Ulitskaya | On Europe

Ludmila Ulitskaya

‘It seems clear to me that during the past ten years, Russia has reached the apex of its estrangement from Europe.’ Translated from the Russian by Polly Gannon.

Grief’s Garden

Caroline Albertine Minor

‘I imagined his journey out of the coma as an increasingly painful ascent through dark water.’ Translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight.

Tasked with Designing the Vienna House

Ken Babstock

‘Sky of bright rust and / soapy aquamarine.’

On Being French and Chinese

Tash Aw

‘We were trapped in a sort of double prison: by poverty in Europe, and by China and its expectations of us.’

Marie Darrieussecq | On Europe

Marie Darrieussecq

‘There is a Europe of life and a Europe of death, on the mass graves of which we perpetuate a dream.’ Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale.

Itinerant

Andrew Miller

‘Was this an adventure or was I in trouble? At what point did one begin to shade into the other?’

Michael Hofmann | On Europe

Michael Hofmann

‘For all its flimsiness, the cage takes itself terribly seriously, restricting access, glorying in the name of Fatherland.’

The Poetics of Trauma

Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson

Swedish poet and psychoanalyst Ulf Karl Olov Nilsson on trauma, silence and linguistic analysis of asylum seekers. Translated from the Swedish by Peter Graves.

Fanciphobia

Colin Herd

‘I wear my fear around me / I fan it out on my pillow’

Binidittu

Nicola Lo Calzo & Daisy Lafarge

‘It’s perhaps a truism that acts of devotion both make and unmake the devotional object.’ Daisy Lafarge introduces the photographs of Nicola Lo Calzo.

Orhan Pamuk | On Europe

Orhan Pamuk

‘In the part of the world where I come from, Europe is not just an ideal and a beautiful dream’ Translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap.

Six Kilometres

Adam Weymouth

‘Migration will not stop: if there is a single lesson to be taken home from Lesbos it is that.’

Jacqueline Rose | On Europe

Jacqueline Rose

‘We will get nowhere in understanding the present crisis unless we, as Europeans, are willing to look into the dark heart of ourselves.’

Romesh Gunesekera | On Europe

Romesh Gunesekera

‘Identity, it seemed, was not so self-determined after all.’

My Chequered Europe

Melitta Breznik

‘A Europe of different languages, landscapes and cultures, all of which have retained their characters.’ Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins.

Srećko Horvat | On Europe

Srećko Horvat

‘We are the ones who are responsible for not repeating the mistakes of the past.’