Granta #176
145 x 210 mm, 288 pages
London, UK
Editor: Thomas Meaney
Design: Daniela Silva
Publisher: Sigrid Rausing
From Nobel laureates to debut novelists, international translations to investigative journalism, each themed issue of Granta turns the attention of the world’s best writers on to one aspect of the way we live now.
‘American Berserk’ is the theme of this issue, an ambiguous yet seemingly perennial force defined by editor Thomas Meaney as ‘a stringent will to clear away the flotsam of the country—to bulldoze accumulated corruptions—and pave way for an idealised freedom.’
Featured writers include novelist Mary Gaitskill, whose short story ‘Intercession’ follows a candid phone call between two friends, harnessing dark humour to explore the ominous theme at hand; writer and reporter John Jeremiah Sullivan recounts the calamitous confession of the ‘terrible truth’ revealed by the protagonist of his story set in a psychiatric ward; Rebecca Curtis portrays the plight of an anxious wife, juxtaposed by her scheming husband and his lofty plans to cull ‘the globe’s sapien-load’ to end global poverty; and Kathryn Scanlan transforms the sounds of a neighbourhood into ‘strange poetry’. Elsewhere, writer and journalist William T. Vollmann reports from Cuba, immortalising the local characters he encounters through a series of interviews.
Plus, further contributions from the likes of Amie Barrodale, Halle Hill, Hansen Shi, Tao Lin, Antonia Hitchens, Frederick Seidel, Patricia Lockwood, Osdany Morales, Maggie Millner and Michael Robbins.