Grandfather, are you asleep?
–No.
–I asked you a question.
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‘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.
‘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.
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 →
‘Note to self: Take a walk / to go see Hermann Hesse’
Two poems by Robert Walser, translated by Damion Searls.
‘I read somewhere that you can get used to anything, and habit is the strongest force in our lives.’
Fiction by Marlen Haushofer, translated by Shaun Whiteside.
‘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.
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