To read this in full, take out a subscription to Granta. Over forty years of new writing at your fingertips – subscribe now.
Sign in to Granta.com.
Anna Pyasetskaya
Anna Pyasetskaya is the founder of a Chechen-Russian organization which counsels and represents people still searching for missing family members. ‘The Lost Boys’ (Granta 64) was first published in Karta, a Russian journal dedicated to human-rights issues.
More about the author →Heidi Bradner
More about the author →Translated by Galina Orlova
More about the translator →Translated by Patricia Cocrell
More about the translator →More on Granta.com
Working Girls
A. Jiang
‘I tried to work out how many elements I would have plugged if I retired at sixty, and soon I was fatigued before a simple subtraction.’
Fiction by A. Jiang.
Piranhas and Us
Can Xue
‘An enormous black form rose from the water. Uncle Feng told me in a low voice to run fast.’
Fiction by Can Xue, translated by Annelise Finegan.
China Time
Thomas Meaney
‘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.
Speedwell
Zhang Yueran
‘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.
Hunter
Shuang Xuetao
‘Lu Dong is a fifth-rate actor – that’s by his own ranking system.’
Fiction by Shuang Xuetao, translated by Jeremy Tiang.
Helen and Julia
Sarah Waters
‘She felt exhausted, emptied out; she thought of the day that had passed—it was astonishing to her, that a single set of hours could contain so many separate states of violent feeling.’
