‘The through line in my work that I see is how easily we can turn people into the other’
Granta Magazine’s Josie Mitchell speaks to Karan Mahajan about being one of Granta’s 2017 Best of Young American Novelists.
They discuss writing about terrorism, the confusions of being an Indian-American novelist, and the limitations of show-don’t-tell in Western writing.
‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
‘Thanks to what Chetan had published, he and his parents were in trouble, and he was exiled from India.’
Fiction by Karan Mahajan.
“I’m from here. I grew up here. In fact, that’s why the government invited me back for this work.”
Short fiction by Karan Mahajan.
‘Too often, a kind of travel writing – especially the novel set abroad in an exotic locale – feels like a way of allegorizing and escaping problems at home.’
Karan Mahajan visits Lexington, Virginia – a centre of the Confederary – in the wake of the far-right rally in Charlottesville.
‘Long before terrorism became fashionable in the West and commonplace in the East, there was a bombing at the Sovereign Center in Delhi.’
