Katharina Bielenberg

‘Language is always logic, no matter which language it is.’

Lev Ozerov

‘A piece of boxwood, gripped in a vise, / waits on the workbench for his knife.’ Poetry by Lev Ozerov, translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk, and introduced by Robert Chandler.

Sigrid Rausing

Editor Sigrid Rausing introduces Granta 145: Ghosts.

André Aciman

‘We all have ways of placing markers on our lives.’

Amos Oz & Shira Hadad

Amos Oz in conversation with Shira Hadad, translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston.

Bernard Cooper

‘I knew I had a problem when I woke up in a Motel 6 in Fresno.’

Sheila Heti

‘Every night for three weeks, I sat with Hitler after dinner.’

Steven Dunn

‘I close my eyes and circle my finger around the map. Wherever my finger lands.’

Vasily Grossman

‘On the rampage, he truly did become a devil; it was impossible to restrain him.’ Translated from the Russian by Robert & Elizabeth Chandler.

Monika Bulaj & Janine di Giovanni

‘The people I met once I reached Bamiyan were not victims.’ Janine di Giovanni introduces Monika Bulaj’s photographs.

Maggie O’Farrell

‘It is part angel, part lepidopteran, part Rorschach inkblot.’

Cortney Lamar Charleston

‘Backtrack / to the bones of the matter, which are the bones themselves.’

Sandra Newman

‘It was one of those parties where no one knew the hostess.’

Inigo Thomas

‘It was given to her by her Japanese captors after the Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 to pack the few possessions she was allowed to take with her to prison.’

Ahmet Altan

‘I was in a cage because a man had eaten an apple.’ Translated from the Turkish by Yasemin Çongar.

Eugene Lim

‘In the future we have to be as interesting to the AI as our pets are to us.’

Maria Reva

‘One can only argue with an intellectual like Konstantyn Illych if one speaks to him on his level.’

Jess Row

‘We have to reverse-engineer our genius so that we can appreciate the simple things.’

Jana Prikryl

‘he cut out small talk / not hearing it, convincingly deaf to its nothing’

Anne Carson

‘I taught you what you know, I never taught you what I know.’

Callie Gardner

‘In Iris, they speak a language with a hundred pronouns.’

Miriam Bird Greenberg

‘Why wasn’t I better made / to refute assimilation’s maze’

John Boyne

Meet Gore Vidal in this excerpt from John Boyne’s novel A Ladder to the Sky.

Daša Drndić

‘A threatening soundlessness falls like a breeze onto our stone floor.’

Holly Pester

‘I went to Ilford alone / was handed a pink laminated square’

Jack Losh

Jack Losh reports from rebel-held Bria in the Central African Republic, where fighting has forced thousands into a displacement camp.

Mariana Enriquez

‘I found a way to speak: the women talked for me’ Translated by Josie Mitchell.

Tiffany Murray

Tiffany Murray on living with Freddie Mercury as a child.

Ali Fitzgerald

Notes on crafting a graphic memoir from Ali Fitzgerald.

Aoko Matsuda

‘The woman dies. She dies to provide a plot twist. She dies to develop the narrative. She dies for cathartic effect. She dies because no one could think of what else to do with her.’ Aoko Matsuda, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton.

Akwaeke Emezi & Halimat Shode

Akwaeke Emezi

‘We came from somewhere – everything does.’

David Hayden

Horror from David Hayden. ‘A shuddering, wordless voice rose in the distance, and another, and another; a chorus, a lament, which ended in a low grunt. There was a coda of sobbing. There was silence.’

Colin Grant

'Can the black author really write out of her or his colour? In writing about black characters can they ever escape race?' Colin Grant looks at the evolution of racial politics.

Naben Ruthnum

A young film composer turns to prostitution in a short story by Naben Ruthnum, set in a Rome of the early 1970s.

Hernán Díaz

‘Her mother was still sitting on the sofa, stroking the left armrest while she talked.’