My first and only visit to a therapist cost me my red coral bracelet and my lover.
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‘My first and only visit to a therapist cost me my red coral bracelet and my lover.’
My first and only visit to a therapist cost me my red coral bracelet and my lover.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
Margot Bettauer Dembo is a translator of German literature into English. She has translated works by Judith Hermann and Ödön von Horváth amongst others. She is the winner of Goethe-Institut Berlin Translator’s Prize in 1994. She lives in New York.
More about the translator →
‘The story distracts the readers from the heart of the matter; it distracts them from me.’
Fiction by Judith Hermann, translated by Katy Derbyshire.
‘Afterwards Ellen liked to say she had once been to America but couldn't remember it very well.‘
‘Time retreated, his dread crouched in the farthest recess of his mind.’
‘At night her friends let loose and relax.’
Photography by Vera Yijun Zhou of house parties and clubs in Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing.
Our ten most popular pieces of memoir, criticism and reportage, including writing by Mary Gaitskill, Gary Indiana, Christian Lorentzen, Tao Lin and Sheila Heti.
‘We are back in Paradise and are now trying to come up with a new game.’
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