‘IT can always tell when you’re reading somewhere in the house,’ my mother used to...
‘IT can always tell when you’re reading somewhere in the house,’ my mother used to say. ‘There’s a special silence, a reading silence.’ I never heard it, this extra degree of hush that somehow travelled through walls and ceilings to announce that my seven-year-old self had become about a…
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.
‘Here I stand on Observation Hill. If the Devil made me an offer at this moment, I feel sure I would accept.’
‘Culture has been bound up since the beginning with extraction.’
The editor introduces the issue.
‘Many people in the country seem happy to accept mercenaries in exchange for stability.’
James Pogue on the Wagner Group in the Central African Republic.
‘After making sure our guests all had the drinks and/or drugs they required, I put on a Sun Ra record.’
A short story by Benjamin Kunkel.
‘Like all money, Bitcoin is valuable only to the degree that people believe in its value.’
Photography by Danny Franzreb, introduced by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian.
‘Did she process my gentle hand in the same way as the objectifying touch of the men before me? Did she know the difference?’
