Granta | The Home of New Writing

Justin Torres | Interview

Julia Armfield | First Sentence

Julia Armfield

‘A first line is a threat, I think.’ Julia Armfield on the first sentence of her story ‘Longshore Drift’.

The Billionaire Comes To Supper

Hanif Kureishi

A new short story from Hanif Kureishi.

Love After Abuse

Lucia Osborne-Crowley

Lucia Osborne-Crowley on the complexity of navigating sexuality while recovering from sexual abuse.

we are seen by the world / what must be seen

Nisha Ramayya

‘oh dirty feet blood-clotter / oh grease monkey clod-hopper / oh cloud-devourer spit’

Facsimiles

Linda Mannheim

‘There is nothing where the Towers should be but smoke. There are no buildings.’

Three Poems

Chus Pato

‘you alone sit down at that table / facing the houses you tried to inhabit’
Translated from the Galician by Erín Moure.

Careless

Hiroko Oyamada

‘As I lay on the mattress, the white toe pads of the gecko floated up before me, against the vastness of the blue-black night. Rather than a presence, it seemed to me more like a trace, a barely discernible odour that flooded in on the air.’

Simon

Daniel J. O’Malley

‘When we pulled up at the house, Simon was there waiting, on the porch.’ New fiction by Daniel J. O’Malley

To the Dogs

Jianan Qian

A short story by Jianan Qian on stray dogs, desperation and re-education in rural China during the Cultural Revolution.

The Fallen

Carlos Manuel Álvarez

Read an excerpt from The Fallen by Carlos Manuel Álvarez, translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne and available now from Fitzcarraldo Books.

The Emperor of Ice Cream

Rebecca Tamás

‘Death is terrifying and impossibly big, but life is even bigger – vulgar, relentless, ruthless.’

The Water Tower and the Turtle

Kikuko Tsumura

‘It was safe to say I didn’t really know anybody in this town at all.’ New fiction translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton.

Mail-Order Marriage
for Shy Brides

Molly Gutman

‘The husband, when we are introduced, will already be the husband.’

Lemons in Winter

Mika Taylor

‘I wonder why I am always the last to let go. I wonder if there is any amount that will ever be enough.’

Real Life

Josephine Rowe

New short fiction by Josephine Rowe.

Nina Leger | Notes on Craft

Nina Leger

‘To say nothing about her was the only way to allow her to be everything.’

Hammer

Adrian Van Young

‘I shift my weight right, where the hammer hangs down. Then left, then right, then left again.’

Sirens

Jorge Consiglio

‘A knock-off Conrad. He’d drive us to school in his car.’

The Marriage Finger

Kathryn Scanlan

‘On the marriage finger was a gold ring topped with a big prong-set stone.’ New fiction by Kathryn Scanlan.

The Last Rite of the Body

Sophie Mackintosh

‘My ex-boyfriend dies, and we all gather to put our hands into his body.’ New fiction from Sophie Mackintosh.

Bookshelves: John Berger in My Family Album

Amitava Kumar

‘The contours of the family arranged on the bookshelf shifted.’

Natural History

Eva Warrick

‘Vita thought she saw a handgun in her father’s underwear drawer.’

Three Poems

Anthony Anaxagorou

‘we are born / to a siren and the wail of each other’

From This End of Sadness

Peter Gizzi

‘I did not understand / the code that held / me to the world.’

In Conversation

Joanna Kavenna & Peter Pomerantsev

‘We are real in an unreal reality, which we’re told is really real and that we’re actually unreal.’

Two Poems

Heather Christle

‘I am asking in case it happens, / because anything can and even does.’

The Spread

Ben Lerner

‘He began to feel less like he was delivering a speech and more like a speech was delivering him.’

Read an extract from Ben Lerner’s latest novel, The Topeka School.

Innards

Magogodi oaMphela Makhene

‘To pick the right heart, the old man said, you had to look for depth in the ruby, to prize a raw intensity of colour and a bright gold fat blanketing the angry muscle.’

The Line

Amor Towles

‘It didn’t take long for the citizens of Moscow to realize that if you had no choice but to stand in line, then Pushkin was the man to stand next to.’

Quantum Displacement

Nuar Alsadir

‘I don’t want / to be a figure others lean their names into’

Longshore Drift

Julia Armfield

‘She has never been very keen on the thought of herself as other people see her.’

Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova

Haruki Murakami

‘That was the setup for the review I wrote about this imaginary record.’ Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel.

H+

Matthieu Gafsou & Daisy Hildyard

‘It’s a shadow-world: strangely familiar, all the same.’ Daisy Hildyard introduces Mattieu Gafsou’s photoessay on transhumanism.

Field Notes on a Marriage

Te-Ping Chen

‘I tell myself it doesn’t do to fixate too much on the dead: apart from everything else, they can’t answer you.’

Providence

Sara Majka

‘It’ll always come to this, I said, laying my head on your shoulder.’

Good Progress

Jem Calder

‘I released the picture of my mother’s breast, which resized itself to auto-fit my smartphone’s display.’