‘I stood in front of the roller coaster, whose winding tracks looked like intestines in a demon's stomach.’
Two thousand and four, the year of the monkey, my zodiac year. Two weeks before the New Year, Old Aunt Li stopped me on my way home and told me to buy a red rope. ‘Tie it around your waist,’ she said. ‘That’ll get rid of bad luck.’ She was the self-appointed director of the Community Manag…
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
‘They couldn’t put their finger on exactly what it was they craved, but they knew it was very different to what they had.’
Fiction by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes.
‘People say it’s healthy for couples to fight, it means there’s still passion. I’ve always assumed that was bullshit, but now I’m not sure.’
Fiction by Brad Phillips.
‘Being recognised as part of a couple thrilled me; I felt legitimised. John had a life, a full life.’
Fiction by Sophie Collins.
‘Love is a concept about which I have long been very sceptical. I have seen the damage that can be done, and can be justified, in the name of love.’
Fiction by Kevin Brazil.
‘Eight years in, Hal felt like another her, somehow.’
Fiction by Alexandra Tanner.
‘Culture has been bound up since the beginning with extraction.’
The editor introduces the issue.
