Grandfather, are you asleep?
–No.
–I asked you a question.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘Why should Switzerland of all places have no army? It costs billions and billions, but we can afford it.’
Grandfather, are you asleep?
–No.
–I asked you a question.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
Max Frisch published his first book in 1940. ‘Switzerland Without an Army?’ (Granta 35) was first published in German as a pamphlet around the time of the Swiss referendum to abolish the military. The referendum was defeated by a vote of 1,903,797 (64,4 per cent).
More about the author →Michael Bullock was a British novelist, poet and translator. He translated many literary works of French and German into English. He died in 2008.
More about the translator →
‘I think people who ape the sentiments of others often go on to believe the thing they said. It becomes their opinion.’
Juliet Jacques and Iphgenia Baal discuss early digital cultures, precarity and social architecture.
‘How do we perform our politics, our outrage and our grievances when we are among a group?’
Anthony Anaxagorou talks about his collection Heritage Aesthetics.
‘By the time I was in my teens, I had taken up an existence framed by a double negative: not male, not white.’
An excerpt from Tsitsi Dangarembga’s essay collection, Black and Female.
‘Traditional hand-craft becomes literary practice; becomes critical theory.’
Preti Taneja on intertextuality.
‘We live with the permanent sense of imminent disaster.’
Charif Majdalani on the situation in Beirut. Translated from the French by Ruth Diver.
Rebecca Solnit discusses interweaving personal narratives with the lives of Mary Shelley and Che Guevara, paradoxes and Beyoncé.
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.