New Writing on Granta.com
Essays & Memoir|Issue 167
You Are the Product
Rosanna McLaughlin
‘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.
Essays & Memoir|Issue 167
You Are the Product
Lillian Fishman
‘What is the read receipt for?’ Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
Essays & Memoir|Issue 167
You Are the Product
Daisy Hildyard
‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’ Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
Fiction|Issue 167
The Spread
Stacy Skolnik
‘It was the first teasing days of spring, the scent in the air a cross between death and cum.’ Fiction by Stacy Skolnik.
In Conversation|The Online Edition
In Conversation
m nourbeSe philip & Momtaza Mehri
‘I think the stories that cannot yet be told must be told, can only be told, by un-telling.’ Momtaza Mehri in conversation with m nourbeSe philip.
Granta 167: Extraction
As They Laid Down Their Cables
Laleh Khalili
‘The Eilat–Ashkelon pipeline went into operation in 1969, on the eve of the nationalisation of oil.’
Laleh Khalili on energy politics and the ‘secret’ pipeline transporting crude oil across southern Israel.
The Extracted Earth
Thea Riofrancos
‘It’s perhaps hard to imagine a country with abundant mineral or oil reserves simply leaving that wealth underground. But there are precedents here, historical and contemporary.’
Granta interviews Thea Riofrancos.
The Last Freeminers of England
William Atkins & Tereza Červeňová
‘It is a principle of freemining that you leave nothing of value on site, nothing other than the mine itself, which is of value only to a freeminer.’
William Atkins visits the Forest of Dean, with photography by Tereza Červeňová.
The True Depth of a Cave
Rachel Kushner
‘When you live underground, among the things you discover is that you are not alone.’
Fiction by Rachel Kushner.
Wagner in Africa
James Pogue
‘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.
Constructing a Nervous System
Margo Jefferson
Winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize Book of the Year
In this intimate and innovative memoir, Pulitzer prize-winning author Margo Jefferson gives us her own personal and intellectual formation.
From Josephine Baker’s radiant transformations, to Willa Cather’s aesthetics of whiteness, Jefferson shows us how we can find space in cultures that will not make room for us, and how, even in times of stricture, we might learn to construct ourselves.
From the Archive
A Small Bengal, NW3
Amit Chaudhuri
‘Those who stayed on had their reasons. . . and none of those reasons, it is safe to suppose, had anything to do with an overwhelming attachment to England.’
An essay by Amit Chaudhuri.
Means of Transport
John Berger
‘Use these photos as means of transport. Ride on them. No passes needed. Go close. Imprudently close. They leave every minute.’
John Berger on images of violent dispossession from South Africa and Lesotho.
Sugar Daddy
Angela Carter
‘However unconsciously, as if that were an excuse, he’d prepared a potentially lethal bed for this daughter’s lover.’
Angela Carter about her father.
Highlights From Granta Books
Recommended Reading
From Zanzibar to Marbach
Abdulrazak Gurnah
‘The tragedies inflicted on the people of East Africa as a result of European rivalries are belittled and forgotten.’
Abdulrazak Gurnah on German East Africa.
Last Week at Marienbad
Lauren Oyler
‘The only thing on the schedule was spa.’
Lauren Oyler on her trip to Marienbad.
Ecstatic Joy and Its Variants
Peter Gizzi
‘surely this is about water jetting from a spring, / a languid rafting with no particular destination’
Poetry by Peter Gizzi.
Missing Out
Leila Aboulela
‘She had held the day up with pegs; not only her day but his too.’
Fiction by Leila Aboulela.
News, Prizes and Events
When I Sing, Mountains Dance and Chilean Poet Shortlisted for Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize
When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Sola (trans. Mara Faye Lethem) and Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra (trans. Megan McDowell) are both shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.
Our Share of Night Shortlisted for The Kitschies
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez (trans. Megan McDowell) is shortlisted for The Kitschies Red Tentacle award, awarded to speculative, sci-fi and fantasy novels.
I’m A Fan Wins a British Book Award
I'm A Fan by Sheena Patel wins the Book of the Year: Discover Award at the British Book Awards.