The moth locked up all
winter in the strongbox.
Mostly
mind after a while.
Flimsy scrap
of sky. Diligent
calm.
Like my father
without weight. The door
between us made of water.
Wake up, Daddy.
Your cup. I’m calling.
The whole
thing at once—once
and for all.
Photograph by Angie Garrett
‘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.
‘But here we are again, you and I, the / two of us, tangled / up and biological.’
‘There really was a moth I found in a toolbox (not as musical or interesting as ‘strongbox’), alive, in the attic, in that box.’
‘At a time when China has become a unifying specter of menace for Western governments, this issue of Granta brings the country’s literary culture into focus.’
The editor introduces the issue.
‘Fiction is a kind of spell, I said, and analysing a story is an exorcism. It loses all its mystery.’
Fiction by Zhang Yueran, translated by Jeremy Tiang.
‘Lu Dong is a fifth-rate actor – that’s by his own ranking system.’
Fiction by Shuang Xuetao, translated by Jeremy Tiang.
‘Helfrecht’s forest is a place where dead wood has taken on the form of a woman, where we stare wild animals in the eye, where we suspect body parts may be hidden under the snow.’
Hanna Englemeier introduces photography by Elena Helfrecht. Translated by Peter Kuras.
