‘Didn’t she know that the world was standing on its heels to punish a girl who had grown beyond her limits?’
A short story by Vivek Shanbhag, translated by Deepa Ganesh.
‘Usually, if you’ve read someone’s stories and seen their photos, you’d feel like you knew the man.’
A short story by Saadat Hasan Manto, translated by Matt Reeck.
‘Where once existed a sixty-five-year-old somewhat heavy-set woman with thin-framed spectacles and hair only slightly greying at the sides, there was now a compressed and gleaming plastic bag.’
Fiction by Bhavika Govil.
‘The voiceover said that while the earliest prisoners sent to the island were dangerous criminals, a new brand of inmates at the Cellular Jail were revolutionaries – they came to prison “as if they were going to a temple”.’
Amitava Kumar on the Andamans Islands.
‘The word I used – janamdin, not saalgira – gave me away as someone who could only have grown up in India.’
Aatish Taseer on Urdu, Hindi and the cultural intricacies of the sister languages.
Granta 173: India
I Am My Mother’s Older Brother
Sujatha Gidla
‘When I was first told she had dementia, I was happy to learn she was not evil but merely sick.’
Sujatha Gidla on caring for her mother.
Indian Temptations
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
‘I understand that there is a temptation to bring everything in India, whether it’s literature, music or art, around to its relationship to nationalism. But as my friends in the art world have always taught me, that is surely impoverished as an analysis.’
Granta interviews Sanjay Subrahmanyam.
Under the Ruins
Raghu Karnad
‘The footage of Modi’s dive, however, only shows the submerged prime minister; nothing of the submerged city.’
Raghu Karnad on the Mahabharata and the relationship between archeology and nationalism.
The Thin Red Corridor
Snigdha Poonam
‘There is no comfort in driving down a road once lined with landmines, even if your companion is the one who put them there.’
Snigdha Poonam meets an Adivasi Maoist who shows her how the state has co-opted the local rebels.
House Painting, Dead Poets Directory & Lineman
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
‘A house lizard’s / tail twitching to join / the reptile it was / part of’
Poetry by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.
Online Series | Dead to Me
Playground Girls
Sophie Kemp
‘The first girls who were ever dead to me were the playground girls.’
Sophie Kemp on childhood and playground politics.
Ride or Die
Megan Nolan
‘The first rule of this friendship is that it is devoted, overly so, as intrinsic and codependent and borderline morbid as any ill-fated romance.’
Megan Nolan on intense friendships.
Together
Eileen Myles
‘It’s a toss-up between the meanest friend breakup and the most absent one.’
Eileen Myles on friendships that begin with fights.
C’mon Billy
Lauren J. Joseph
‘We weren’t fucking but we slept in the same bed, not out of necessity but out of a shared feeling that it would be inexcusable to waste even a second.’
Lauren J. Joseph on friendships and fallouts.
Thomas, Tommy
Ralf Webb
‘We were forced into extreme proximity. Understandably, he found my behaviours insufferable.’
Ralf Webb on friendship and loathing.
A Supposedly Close Friend I Might Never See Again
Audun Mortensen
‘He seemed to relish the reactions sparked by his open ambition.’
Audun Mortensen on friendship, ambition, and ‘Norway’s ugliest town’.
From the Archive
Head Above Water
Buchi Emecheta
‘Inside, I knew it was more complicated: I knew I was both – a “bush” girl and a civilized Christian.’
Buchi Emecheta on her childhood in Lagos.
The Black Sheep
Italo Calvino
‘And then one day – nobody knows how – an honest man appeared.’
Fiction by Italo Calvino
Shrinks
Edmund White
‘Self-doubt, which is a cousin to self-hatred, became my constant companion.’
Edmund White on psychology, spirituality and submission.
The Vegetarian
Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith
Winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature
Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more ‘plant-like’ existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares. In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye’s decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism.
Fraught, disturbing and beautiful, The Vegetarian is a novel about modern day South Korea, but also a novel about shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.
