‘If they’re willing to do this for their country then I should be willing to make the same sacrifices.’
It’s close to midnight when I cross the Mississippi River at Saint Louis. The soaring stainless-steel Gateway Arch gleams in the skyline light.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
‘I have no house, from time to time I dream of having one, not a holiday home but a house to bury myself in.’
Memoir by Yasmina Reza, translated by Alison L. Strayer.
‘I make a certain effort / to give my sister in Korea / the impression / that I am interested’
Poetry by Audun Mortensen.
‘They started out as fraternities, the cults. Poorer students wanted strong networks, like the ones boarding school pupils had already.’
Fiction by Toye Oladinni.
‘My father said there is fate and destiny governing each of our paths, of individuals and of nations, and this only the dead may know.’
Aube Rey Lescure on returning to China.
‘Thanks to what Chetan had published, he and his parents were in trouble, and he was exiled from India.’
Fiction by Karan Mahajan.
‘Since Omphalos is such spectactular nonsense, readers may rightly ask why I choose to discuss it at all. I do so, first of all, because its author was such a serious and fascinating man.’
