‘Pronto?’ I lift the phone in our bedroom.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘My last glimpse of Paolo was on the platform at Verona station when I pointed him out to the police.’
‘Pronto?’ I lift the phone in our bedroom.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
Tim Parks was born in Manchester and moved to Italy in 1981. He is the author of five non-fiction accounts of life in northern Italy, most recently A Literary Tour of Italy, and sixteen novels. He has translated the work of, among others, Alberto Moravia and Italo Calvino and writes for the New York Review of Books blog. Painting Death, his latest novel, is published by Harvill Secker.
More about the author →‘It was explained to me that in Italy a formality is a sort of dormant volcano.’
‘She rings a tiny cymbal over your body. She says, The experience is finished now.’
A story by Yara Rodrigues Fowler.
‘Up on the light box on the wall are the scans of Gary’s brain, bone white standing out against smoked grey.’
John Niven remembers the last days of his brother, Gary.
Granta magazine is run by the Granta Trust (charity number 1184638)
The copyright to all contents of this site is held either by Granta or by the individual authors, and none of the material may be used elsewhere without written permission. For reprint enquiries, contact us.