‘These jokes are your defense.’
A short story by Anne Carson, winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature.
‘He gestured for me to sit, opened his little refrigerator, got out two Diet Cokes. “You like these right?”’
Fiction by Amie Barrodale.
‘Overlooking the water from my rental car, I thought about the American Girl’s pupal stage. About my pupal stage. The moment when a girl becomes an extraordinary machine.’
Sophie Kemp on the American teenage girl.
‘The man did not remember the first four or five days in the hospital very well. He mentioned it, the localized amnesia, to one of the nurses, who said it was normal.’
Fiction by John Jeremiah Sullivan.
‘He was an eminent historian of the United States, a perceptive social critic, and a professor at Columbia University. But as a dad he was playful and affectionate and irreverent.’
Dan Hofstadter on his father, the historian Richard Hofstadter.
Granta 176: American Berserk
Dathun
Amie Barrodale
‘He gestured for me to sit, opened his little refrigerator, got out two Diet Cokes. “You like these right?”’
Fiction by Amie Barrodale.
First Year Sober & Sentimentality
Maggie Millner
‘Imagine ruining your life, / I thought, / the ecstasy of that.’
Two poems by Maggie Millner.
The Year of the Rat
Halle Hill
‘A recent Facebook IQ test had revealed Lee to be a man at the far right of the bell curve, not just gifted but searingly brilliant.’
A short story by Halle Hill.
Making Cuba Great Again
William T. Vollmann
‘Two men stood on the street – good enough for me. “And do you consider yourselves socialist or not?” I inquired.’
William T. Vollmann visits Cuba.
He Trains My Hands for War
Zora J Murff & Ciarán Finlayson
‘He placed family portraits alongside a newspaper clipping recording the murder of his mother’s boyfriend.’
Ciarán Finlayson introduces Zora J Murff’s photography and collage.
Online Series | Resistance
Running Behind
Stephanie Wambugu
‘I missed a good portion of the outing and hoped the insult would come across.’
Stephanie Wambugu on chronic lateness.
Picture Me Crying
Rachel Connolly
‘Almost nobody has ever seen me cry. This has been true my entire life.’
Rachel Connolly on accessing vulnerability.
Things on Places
Jeremy Atherton Lin
‘The festoonery interrupts the usual, how things are meant to be.’
Jeremy Atherton Lin on resenting Christmas.
Principal Witness
Izabella Scott
‘The summons made clear that if I failed to turn up (which I had), a warrant could be issued for my arrest.’
Izabella Scott on court testimonies.
Free Botox
Amber Husain
‘I sensed, if you can believe it, that I was being fobbed off.’
Amber Husain on refusing free Botox.
From Granta 174: Therapy
Melanie Klein Among the U-Boats
Ben Parker
‘Whenever Richard mentioned Hitler, Klein unwaveringly substituted “Hitler” with “penis”.’
Ben Parker on Melanie Klein and child psychology.
Lacan in Tirana
Ardian Vehbiu
‘Psychoanalysis never truly took root in Albania during the early decades of the twentieth century and, after the communist takeover in 1944, it was actively suppressed by the regime.’
Ardian Vehbiu on Jacques Lacan’s visit to Albania.
The Narcissus Complex
Daisy Rockwell
‘What a great burden it was to be the artist son of a famous artist father.’
Daisy Rockwell on her father, painting, and her family’s psychoanalytic history.
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.
