âDonald Trump doesnât use a computer. âHe doesnât even have an email address,â Stephanie, a lobbyist, said to me over lunch, lowering her voice as though revealing classified information.â
A portrait of Washington, D.C. by Antonia Hitchens.
âIt was undeniable: the whole world was crazy.â
Fiction by Mary Gaitskill.
âOverlooking the water from my rental car, I thought about the American Girlâs pupal stage. About my pupal stage. The moment when a girl becomes an extraordinary machine.â Sophie Kemp on the American teenage girl.
âHe said society would collapse this year. I asked why this year. He referenced something the president had said. He said three families controlled the president.â Tao Lin picks up a hitchhiker in Hawaii.
âBeing in another country is like / Being dead, you see how people / Go on without youâ Three poems by Patricia Lockwood.
Granta 176: American Berserk
Making Cuba Great Again
William T. Vollmann
âTwo men stood on the street â good enough for me. âAnd do you consider yourselves socialist or not?â I inquired.â
William T. Vollmann visits Cuba.
The Acute Wing
John Jeremiah Sullivan
âThe 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.â
Fiction by John Jeremiah Sullivan.
Intercession
Mary Gaitskill
âIt was undeniable: the whole world was crazy.â
Fiction by Mary Gaitskill.
Blood Boy
Hansen Shi
âThe key was to make everyone as indebted to you as possible.â
Fiction by Hansen Shi.
Dathun
Amie Barrodale
âHe gestured for me to sit, opened his little refrigerator, got out two Diet Cokes. âYou like these right?ââ
Fiction by Amie Barrodale.
Online Series | Resistance
Running Behind
Stephanie Wambugu
âI missed a good portion of the outing and hoped the insult would come across.â
Stephanie Wambugu on chronic lateness.
Picture Me Crying
Rachel Connolly
âAlmost nobody has ever seen me cry. This has been true my entire life.â
Rachel Connolly on accessing vulnerability.
Things on Places
Jeremy Atherton Lin
âThe festoonery interrupts the usual, how things are meant to be.â
Jeremy Atherton Lin on resenting Christmas.
Principal Witness
Izabella Scott
âThe summons made clear that if I failed to turn up (which I had), a warrant could be issued for my arrest.â
Izabella Scott on court testimonies.
Free Botox
Amber Husain
âI sensed, if you can believe it, that I was being fobbed off.â
Amber Husain on refusing free Botox.
From Granta 174: Therapy
Melanie Klein Among the U-Boats
Ben Parker
âWhenever Richard mentioned Hitler, Klein unwaveringly substituted âHitlerâ with âpenisâ.â
Ben Parker on Melanie Klein and child psychology.
Lacan in Tirana
Ardian Vehbiu
âPsychoanalysis 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.â
Ardian Vehbiu on Jacques Lacanâs visit to Albania.
The Narcissus Complex
Daisy Rockwell
âWhat a great burden it was to be the artist son of a famous artist father.âÂ
Daisy Rockwell on her father, painting, and her familyâs 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 âplant-likeâ 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-hyeâs 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.
