Issue 22

Maurizio Chierici

‘Then the explosion stunned me momentarily. Hiroshima disappeared under a yellow cloud. No one spoke after that.’

Uwem Akpan & Jeremiah Chamberlin

‘I just wanted to say something about how decent people struggle in difficult situations.’

Gary Shteyngart & Emily Greenhouse

‘I can’t even afford to have thoughts on London, much less live or visit there.’

Peter Orner & Ted Hodgkinson

‘For me the strange moments that make up our lives are plot.’

Trude Rønnestad & Ted Hodgkinson

‘To an extent I have tried to make the issue span the full spectrum of Norwegian literature.’

Peter Carey

Peter Carey on Alexis de Tocqueville, writing fiction and the inspiration for his forthcoming novel.

Jennifer Egan & Yuka Igarashi

‘It wasn’t an experiment so much as a response to the need to find a way to embody the oddly shaped story I wanted to tell.’

Adam Thirlwell & Yuka Igarashi

Adam Thirlwell speaks to Granta’s Yuka Igarashi about sex, history, translation, using tempo in novels and how his writing has evolved over the past decade.

Evan James Roskos & Roy Robins

‘There is a view of American men presented by the media – of men as boorish, insensitive, emotionally immature – that manages to underscore various stereotypes that I feel fiction and poetry have a duty to dismantle.’

Catherine Chung & Ollie Brock

‘I think my interest in mathematics was that of a writer: I was always trying to translate it back into a story.’

John Burnside & Rachael Allen

‘Marx said the forest only echoes back what you shout into it – and this is very often true, perhaps more often than not, but I think the poet’s task is to suggest that it needn’t be.’

Ben Lerner & Ted Hodgkinson

‘I have no memory of intending to write a novel.’

Laurence Hamburger & Rachael Allen

Bruce Chatwin & Michael Ignatieff

‘We have everything here, but I always wish I was somewhere else. It's a condition that makes one very difficult to live with.’

Michael Ignatieff interviews Bruce Chatwin.