Top Reads 2024 | Poems
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How Asians Spend the Night Before Dawn
Vera Yijun Zhou
‘At night her friends let loose and relax.’
Photography by Vera Yijun Zhou of house parties and clubs in Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing.
The Ghost Coat
Catherine Lacey
‘I’d had quite enough of everything. I vowed to no longer mistake obedience for love.’
Fiction by Catherine Lacey.
Pax Domestica
Victor Heringer
‘The whole family: yay. I love my family. (Don’t I.)’
Fiction by Victor Heringer, translated by James Young.
Doing the Work
Geoff Dyer
‘My life is full of regrets – I sometimes think I regret everything about my life – but I’ve never regretted the time spent riding the rails of Thatcher’s Britain.’
Geoff Dyer on conducting market research in the eighties.
In Conversation
Olivia Laing & Jamaica Kincaid
‘The garden is actually an archive, every plant bringing with it a narrative of past injustice, upheaval, shifts in wealth and taste.’
Olivia Laing and Jamaica Kincaid discuss the political significance of the garden.
Doing the Work
Rebecca May Johnson
‘When work is at mealtime, when is mealtime?’
Rebecca May Johnson on waitressing, hunger and eating at work.
Paper People
Yun Sheng
‘Otome games are about women writing romance plots designed to please women – paper hubbies and their voice actors are just a conduit to make the experience more believable.’
Yun Sheng on the rise of virtual love in China.
Doing the Work
Rachael Allen
‘We hated the tourists, but they were the reason we had jobs.’
Rachael Allen on working in a fish and chip shop in Cornwall.
Podcast | Allen Bratton
Allen Bratton
‘This set of characters are simultaneously medieval kings and modern aristocrats.’
Allen Bratton on adapting the Henriad and his debut novel Henry Henry.
Lin Yan
Cao Kou
‘They rented a room – a standard double, two twin beds with a nightstand between them.’
Fiction by Cao Kou, translated by Canaan Morse.
Doing the Work
Junot Díaz
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
Working Girls
A. Jiang
‘I tried to work out how many elements I would have plugged if I retired at sixty, and soon I was fatigued before a simple subtraction.’
Fiction by A. Jiang.
Piranhas and Us
Can Xue
‘An enormous black form rose from the water. Uncle Feng told me in a low voice to run fast.’
Fiction by Can Xue, translated by Annelise Finegan.
China Time
Thomas Meaney
‘At a time when China has become a unifying specter of menace for Western governments, this issue of Granta brings the country’s literary culture into focus.’
The editor introduces the issue.
Speedwell
Zhang Yueran
‘Fiction is a kind of spell, I said, and analysing a story is an exorcism. It loses all its mystery.’
Fiction by Zhang Yueran, translated by Jeremy Tiang.
Hunter
Shuang Xuetao
‘Lu Dong is a fifth-rate actor – that’s by his own ranking system.’
Fiction by Shuang Xuetao, translated by Jeremy Tiang.
White Night
Feng Li
‘For more than twenty years, photographer Feng Li has been documenting the people and backdrops of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, and one of the fastest growing cities on earth.’
Photography by Feng Li, introduced by Granta.
The Excitements of Spring
Zou Jingzhi
‘As a young man, I wanted to learn how to love, but in the end, I did nothing. I wanted to torture myself, but didn’t know where to begin.’
Fiction by Zou Jingzhi, translated by Jeremy Tiang.
Picun
Han Zhang
‘The stories being written by Picun writers and their peers show the effort and the ingenuity required to survive as migrant workers, builders of the economic miracle.’
Han Zhang on the New Workers’ Literature Group of Picun.
The Piranhas
Jianan Qian
‘In the end, the real world always finds a way to live up to rumor.’
Fiction by Jianan Qian, translated by Jianan Qian and Alyssa Asquith.
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Ban Yu
‘It was a special time in Shenyang’s history – everyone was enthusiastic about football, and every company had a football fan club.’
Fiction by Ban Yu, translated by Tony Hao.
Shot in the 1960s, Printed Yesterday
Haohui Liu
‘It is rare to see photos of Daqing from the 1960s that are not part of the official feting of the oil boom.’
Photography by Haoihui Liu, introduced by Granta.
Adrift in the South
Xiao Hai
‘Finally! I thought. Now I get to work in a big factory. I was fifteen and a half years old. I was a child laborer.’
Xiao Hai on coming of age in the factories of Shenzhen, translated by Tony Hao.
Hai Shan Swimming Pool
Yang Zhihan
‘As soon as I turned the corner, I saw her. She was swimming across the blue sea, the only person in the entire swimming pool.’
Fiction by Yang Zhihan, translated by Helen Wang.
Tomorrow I’ll Get Past It
Yu Hua
‘Every time I tried to write more, it turned out to be a fruitless endeavor – I felt like I was trapped in a sealed room with no windows.’
Fiction by Yu Hua, translated by Michael Berry.
New Year’s By the Sea, Spinning Top and Cup
Huang Fan
‘A cup is an open mouth / You kiss each day’
Three poems by Huang Fan, translated by Margaret Ross.
Goodbye, Bridge of the East
Wang Zhanhei
‘To make sure she was looking her best in the photos, Wu Jiayu avoided eating during our dates, and she didn’t order anything for me when we were done.’
A short story by Wang Zhanhei, translated by Dave Haysom.
For Pessoa and My Cows Arrive
Lan Lan
‘I read your love poem, / a failure.’
Two poems by Lan Lan, translated by Diana Shi and George O’Connell.
The Civilian Level
Lie Jie & Zhang Jungang
‘Photographs, they feel, lie in wait for them.’
Photography by Li Jie and Zhang Jungang introduced by Granta.
Birds
Zheng Xiaoqiong
‘in the Huangma Mountains, everything rots readily’
A poem by Zheng Xiaoqiong, translated by Eleanor Goodman.
