Some men live to fly, and Captain John Wilkinson was one of them. His wife Marie tells a story from early in their relationship when Johnny, as his friends knew him, was a young South African Air Force pilot learning to fly the Hercules cargo plane. ‘I love you,’ he told Marie, knowing that what…
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‘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.
‘Apartheid had marked him, as it has marked all of us, in different ways. It made me hyper-aware of colour.’
‘I am on the hunt for the Russian Empire, or what traces might still exist of its colonial enterprise.’
Bathsheba Demuth travels the Yukon river, following the history of the fur trade and the Nulato massacre.
‘More than 111,000 people have gone missing in Mexico in the past six years.’
Anjan Sundaram on cartels, conflict and the rate of disappearances in Mexico.
‘The old romantic warning not to trust a machine more than one’s own intuition has renewed urgency in the digital age.’
Photography by Salvatore Vitale, introduced by Granta.
‘As every soldier and every journalist who has ever covered a war knows – sleeping and eating are the most important things.’
Lindsey Hilsum writes home from Ukraine.
‘Everything had gone well for her until her father died of cancer. Everything—without exception.’
A short story by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin.
