‘Peter Mitchell died on a frontier, not so much between black and white, or between the landed and the landless, as between the past and the future.’
In October 1999, in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, a young man I’ve named Peter Mitchell was shot to death on his father’s farm at about two o’clock on a Monday afternoon. He was twenty-eight years old, a big, chunky guy, square-faced and blond. In his graduation pictures, he towe…
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
Mark Gevisser and Jonny Steinberg discuss recent South African history, their personal relationship to Johannesburg, and their personal relationship to a divided city.
‘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.
‘I can’t help Lentille. Even though she roars. As long as she roars, I won’t be able to work.’
An essay from Urs Mannhart, translated by Christine Müller
‘I will go elsewhere / and remember, recall where / I came from’
A poem by John Kinsella.
Ntsika Kota is the winner of the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa.
