Granta 148: Summer Fiction

Summer 2019

Our summer issue brings you the best new fiction from around the world. Featuring:

Haruki Murakami
Ben Lerner
Amor Towles
David Means
Julia Armfield
Te-Ping Chen
Magogodi oaMphela Makhene
Sara Majka
Thomas Pierce
Adam O’Fallon Price
Jem Calder

Plus poetry from Nuar Alsadir, and a photoessay on transhumanism by Matthieu Gafsou with an introduction by Daisy Hildyard.

Cover painting © Dan McCleary, Grapefruit and Lemon, 2018

Fiction|Granta 148

The Spread

Ben Lerner

‘He began to feel less like he was delivering a speech and more like a speech was delivering him.’

Read an extract from Ben Lerner’s latest novel, The Topeka School.

Fiction|Granta 148

Innards

Magogodi oaMphela Makhene

‘To pick the right heart, the old man said, you had to look for depth in the ruby, to prize a raw intensity of colour and a bright gold fat blanketing the angry muscle.’

Fiction|Granta 148

The Line

Amor Towles

‘It didn’t take long for the citizens of Moscow to realize that if you had no choice but to stand in line, then Pushkin was the man to stand next to.’

Poetry|Granta 148

Quantum Displacement

Nuar Alsadir

‘I don’t want / to be a figure others lean their names into’

Fiction|Granta 148

Longshore Drift

Julia Armfield

‘She has never been very keen on the thought of herself as other people see her.’

Fiction|Granta 148

Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova

Haruki Murakami

‘That was the setup for the review I wrote about this imaginary record.’ Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel.

H+

Matthieu Gafsou & Daisy Hildyard

‘It’s a shadow-world: strangely familiar, all the same.’ Daisy Hildyard introduces Mattieu Gafsou’s photoessay on transhumanism.

Fiction|Granta 148

Field Notes on a Marriage

Te-Ping Chen

‘I tell myself it doesn’t do to fixate too much on the dead: apart from everything else, they can’t answer you.’

Fiction|Granta 148

Providence

Sara Majka

‘It’ll always come to this, I said, laying my head on your shoulder.’

Fiction|Granta 148

Good Progress

Jem Calder

‘I released the picture of my mother’s breast, which resized itself to auto-fit my smartphone’s display.’

Fiction|Granta 148

Visitors Welcome

Thomas Pierce

‘Our reasons for purchasing a reJesus no doubt require little explanation.’

Fiction|Granta 148

Vows

David Means

‘True love is, when seen from afar, a big fat cliché.’

Fiction|Granta 148

Schenectady

Adam O’Fallon Price

‘To be fair, it is near a waterfall; although, to be fair again, everything around here is near a waterfall.’

Fugato

Rafael Frumkin

New fiction from Rafael Frumkin, featuring psychiatrists brandishing DSM–5, delusions, transference and the menacing voice of Alex Trebek.

Not the Foggiest Notion

Jung Young Moon

‘It didn’t matter to me what we would be doing or where. It didn’t matter to me in the least.’ Jung Young Moon, translated from the Korean by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton.

Scissors

Karina Sainz Borgo

‘They reached Cúcuta at midday. All of them except the grandmother were hungry.’

The Cheffe

Marie NDiaye

‘She was proud, but there was no vanity in her pride.’

Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition

On Tastelessness

Adam O’Fallon Price

‘Write through your first ending is advice I give, again and again.’

Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition

Jianan Qian | First Sentence

Jianan Qian

‘For every witness, history unfolded at some other time, and in some other place.’ Jianan Qian on the first sentence of her story, ‘To the Dogs’.

Lois and Varga

Lisa Taddeo

‘Shells, like the kind on the sand of the beach, that’s all they are. That’s all any of us are. All these colored shells, each one trying to be picked up before the rest.’ New fiction by Lisa Taddeo.

Tale of Human Adventure

Diane Williams

‘The whole experience of writing this was enjoyable, as is the entire seriousness with which I take myself.’ New fiction by Diane Williams

Grief in Moderation

Diane Williams

‘The tiny daisies were scored by the shadows of the slats of the venetian blinds and the stripes were shivering.’ Diane Williams.

Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition

Julia Armfield | First Sentence

Julia Armfield

‘A first line is a threat, I think.’ Julia Armfield on the first sentence of her story ‘Longshore Drift’.

The Billionaire Comes To Supper

Facsimiles

Linda Mannheim

‘There is nothing where the Towers should be but smoke. There are no buildings.’

Careless

‘As I lay on the mattress, the white toe pads of the gecko floated up before me, against the vastness of the blue-black night. Rather than a presence, it seemed to me more like a trace, a barely discernible odour that flooded in on the air.’