Lorna Gibb

‘There were rules to the game. I could not lose my virginity and I had to be careful not to let a boy go further than I wanted to.’

Issue 132

Greg Jackson

‘Hara had stumbled on a kind of play, as if they were sisters left alone by their parents for the first time to explore the different ways a day could be deconstructed.‘

Issue 132

Kerry Howley

‘They treated their bodies like some exotic animal they’d found fast asleep, beings they needed to wake to truly know.’

Issue 130

Anjum Hasan

‘motorcyclists like to howl / and dogs drop bulging bags of garbage / from their mouths when they see other dogs / they want to mount’

Minal Hajratwala

‘Please be creative. This is only the beginning.’

Juliet Jacques

‘I ended up piecing my life together through other people.’

Issue 131

Peter Gizzi

‘was it wind or a creature / am I here or is it over’

Angélica Freitas

‘amelia, the real woman, / ran away with the bearded lady’

Jon Fosse

‘You were a chasm that cracked and turned into stones, and then the stones lay there, beautifully laid, in a wall.’

Anjali Joseph

‘I kept returning to the Beckett stories, a favourite since I came upon them in my late teens.’

Ian Jack

Ian Jack's introduction to Granta 130: India.

Issue 130

Anjali Joseph

‘Like scraps of leather, oddly shaped, things from life, people and sayings and objects, found themselves spliced together.’

Anjum Hasan

Issue 132

Daisy Jacobs

‘He’s not himself’, Mum says in the kitchen. Well, who is he then? Is he 40 per cent of his young self? Ten? Do I still have to love him as much as ever, this 90 per cent stranger?