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← Back to all issuesGranta 164: Last Notes
Summer 2023
Generators, rockets, sirens and the clatter of chess – from war in Ukraine to construction booms in Phnom Penh and Cairo; from music to the experience of living in partial silence, in this issue we try to get at what we hear rather than what we see.
Featuring non-fiction by Lydia Davis, Brian Dillon, Wiam El-Tamami, Peter Englund (tr. Sigrid Rausing), Diana Evans, Tabitha Lasley, Adam Mars-Jones, Maartje Scheltens, Anjan Sundaram, Y-Dang Troeung, Ed Vulliamy and Ada Wordsworth.
Fiction by Nicola Barker, Mazen Maarouf (tr. Mazen Maarouf with Laura Susijn), Adèle Rosenfeld (tr. Jeffrey Zuckerman) and Brywan Washington poetry by Oluwaseun Olayiwola and Martha Sprackland.
Photography by Suzie Howell (introduced by A.K. Blakemore), James Berrington and Sama Beydoun.
Cover artwork © Etel Adnan, Untitled, 1998, The Estate of Etel Adnan, courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2023
From this Issue
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Reports from the Front: Winter 2023
Peter Englund
‘I repeat: the landscape of war is an acoustic landscape.’
Peter Englund on the war in Ukraine, translated from the Swedish by Sigrid Rausing.
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Family Meal
Bryan Washington
‘It’s a paper bag filled with pastries. Chicken turnovers.’
An extract from Family Meal by Bryan Washington.
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Cairo Song
Wiam El-Tamami
‘I see this everywhere. The creativity, resourcefulness and incredible talent for improvisation in Egypt.’
Wiam El-Tamami on returning to Cairo.
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One Day It Will all Make Sense
Tabitha Lasley
‘It occurs to me then that he has not invited me for dinner, but my alter ego from the page.’
Tabitha Lasley on writing and dating.
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A Report on Music in Ukraine
Ed Vulliamy
‘Nights at the opera in Ukraine – where everything, including every kind of music, has changed.’
Ed Vulliamy on music in Ukraine.
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Journal Excerpts 1997–1999
Lydia Davis
‘gormandizing, gluttonous, lickerish, guttling’
Excerpts from Lydia Davis’s diary.
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Once a Dancer
Diana Evans
‘What happens to a dancer when they stop dancing?’
Diana Evans on dancing and writing.
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We’re Not Really Strangers
Sama Beydoun
‘The people I’ve photographed made Beirut liveable.’
Sama Beydoun photographs the nightlife of Beirut.
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Soundscapes of Phnom Penh
Anjan Sundaram
‘From my bronze-painted balcony, I chronicled the sounds of Phnom Penh’s private industry.’
Anjan Sundaram on the sound of corruption in Cambodia.
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The Tide
Adèle Rosenfeld
‘In my ears were muted thumps, the drumbeat of my pulse.’
Fiction by Adèle Rosenfeld, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman.
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The Soundscape of War
Ada Wordsworth
‘Ordinary sounds change their meaning in the context of war when the reverberations of sound can mean death.’
Ada Wordsworth on silence, noise and the war in Ukraine.
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Great North Wood
James Berrington
‘One of the things that keeps drawing me back is the wide variety of birds.’
James Berrington photographs the fragments of a London woodland.
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Endurance
Maartje Scheltens
‘Four Organs allows us to step out of time and briefly inhabit infinity.’
Maartje Scheltens on Steve Reich, repetition and discomfort.
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Things That Dream
Brian Dillon
‘Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” might well be the greatest record to feature the Linn drum sound.’
Brian Dillon on the legacy of drum machines.
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Strange Beach
Oluwaseun Olayiwola
‘Worth. It circles around you – / the increasing gap between the surface’
A poem by Oluwaseun Olayiwola.
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More Night
Oluwaseun Olayiwola
‘Immeasurable beauty / is immeasurable precisely / until it’s gone –’
A poem by Oluwaseun Olayiwola.
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Mute Tree
Y-Dang Troeung
‘When and where does the crisis of war begin and end?’
Y-Dang Troeung on the longevity of war.
