Granta | The Home of New Writing

Rachel B. Glaser | Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists

The Secret Pattern

Aube Rey Lescure

‘My father said there is fate and destiny governing each of our paths, of individuals and of nations, and this only the dead may know.’

Aube Rey Lescure on returning to China.

In Her Room

Wang Anyi

‘It would be wrong to say she hasn’t experienced life. Instead, it would be more apt to describe her as someone whom time has slipped by without leaving the slightest trace.’

Fiction by Wang Anyi, translated by Michael Berry.

Images of Women

Elvira Navarro

‘In the years before his stroke, just how many times had her father told a woman he loved her after dating for two or three weeks?’

Fiction by Elvira Navarro, translated by Christina MacSweeney.

International Soul Cultist

Toye Oladinni

‘They started out as fraternities, the cults. Poorer students wanted strong networks, like the ones boarding school pupils had already.’

Fiction by Toye Oladinni.

Podcast | Wang Xiaoshuai

Wang Xiaoshuai

‘It’s more like painting. It’s not like a film.’

Wang Xiaoshuai on the evolution of Chinese cinema and the challenges faced by those working at the vanguard of independent film.

Two Poems

Yu Xiang

‘a centipede devours a grand piano, so / ten thousand fingers / devour Bach’

Poetry by Yu Xiang, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain.

Ancestors

Ekhmetjan Osman

‘A cold star breeze, you pass through my eyelashes.’

A poem by Ekhmetjan Osman translated by Joshua L. Freeman.

The Translator

Tahir Hamut Izgil

‘I might walk endlessly’

A poem by Tahir Hamut Izgil, translated by Joshua L. Freeman.

Spam for President

Harryette Mullen

‘My voice may grate your nerves again.’

A poem by Harryette Mullen.

Friends

Jia Pingwa

‘Your friends might never know you intimately. There are those that will know you intimately but never be your friend.’

Jia Pingwa on friendship.

Ocean Hotpot

Si’an Chen

‘I promise you, the committee only looks at two things: how feasible a proposal is, and what it could actually do for the environment.’

A bureaucrat and an entrepreneur discuss environment-saving proposals in a short play by Si’an Chen, translated by Jeremy Tiang.

Malandrino

Joe Stretch

‘On the doorstep, in the glare of the security lamp, was a thin, bearded man holding a black, breathless terrier.’

Fiction by Joe Stretch.

Export-Import

Karan Mahajan

‘Thanks to what Chetan had published, he and his parents were in trouble, and he was exiled from India.’

Fiction by Karan Mahajan.

The Institute

Maia Siegel

‘The Institute was meeting at Yale, at a corner bar with a pool table and subpar beer. It was only a society at this point, attempting to build itself out.’

Fiction by Maia Siegel.

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.