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Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #133
Granta 133: What Have We Done
The world, as we know it, is changing . . .
In the autumn issue of "Granta," acclaimed nature writer Barry Lopez meditates on language and seeing; poet Kathleen Jamie travels to the Alaskan wilderness; science writer Fred Pearce describes the effort to keep Sellafield safe; Adam Nicolson investigates murder in rural Romania; Robert MacFarlane introduces unpublished extracts from the notebooks of Roger Deakin; and new Australian writer Rebecca Giggs witnesses the monumental death of a stranded whale.
Fiction by Ben Marcus, Ann Beattie, Deb Olin Unferth and David Szalay. Poetry by Noelle Kocot, Maureen McLane, Ange Mlinko and Andrew Motion. Photography by Helge Skodvin introduced by Audrey Niffenegger.
"Every way one turned the tundra was laid out like a green sea, sedgy and subtle and glinting with secret melt pools and waterways." - Kathleen Jamie
In the autumn issue of "Granta," acclaimed nature writer Barry Lopez meditates on language and seeing; poet Kathleen Jamie travels to the Alaskan wilderness; science writer Fred Pearce describes the effort to keep Sellafield safe; Adam Nicolson investigates murder in rural Romania; Robert MacFarlane introduces unpublished extracts from the notebooks of Roger Deakin; and new Australian writer Rebecca Giggs witnesses the monumental death of a stranded whale.
Fiction by Ben Marcus, Ann Beattie, Deb Olin Unferth and David Szalay. Poetry by Noelle Kocot, Maureen McLane, Ange Mlinko and Andrew Motion. Photography by Helge Skodvin introduced by Audrey Niffenegger.
"Every way one turned the tundra was laid out like a green sea, sedgy and subtle and glinting with secret melt pools and waterways." - Kathleen Jamie
224 pages, Paperback
First published November 5, 2015
10 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
Sigrid Rausing
45 books52 followersSigrid Rausing is Editor and Publisher of Granta magazine and Publisher of Granta and Portobello Books. She is the author of History, Memory and Identity in Post-Soviet Estonia: The End of a Collective Farm and Everything is Wonderful, which has been translated into four different languages.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
January 31, 2016
excellent issue that i read end to end (i usually read some of any current Granta issue but rarely end to end) with two pieces that stayed with me - a non-fiction account of killing for a small piece of land in Maramures ("pentru o palma de pamant" or literally a "hand's breath of land") and a fiction piece by David Szalay about a Belgian academic and his Polish journalist girlfriend, but all the rest and the nature pictures are worth checking out 9there is a moving account of the death of a beached whale despite all people could do to save it, an interesting story by Ben Marcus, an Alaskan one and more)
November 20, 2017
3.5 rounded up
The nonfiction pieces on Sellafield, Alaska, the beached whale and murders over farming land in Romania were all brilliant. I really liked the taxidermy photo series too (like is perhaps the wrong word, but they were excellent photographs). The only parts I didn’t particularly enjoy were the two longer short stories by Ben Marcus and David Szalay.
The nonfiction pieces on Sellafield, Alaska, the beached whale and murders over farming land in Romania were all brilliant. I really liked the taxidermy photo series too (like is perhaps the wrong word, but they were excellent photographs). The only parts I didn’t particularly enjoy were the two longer short stories by Ben Marcus and David Szalay.
December 11, 2015
This is a stunning issue of Granta, full of key questions about self, relationships, nature and horrific stuff we humans wreak on each other.
I'll begin with the last pieces by Roger Deakin, offered by his executor Robert Macfarlane. Writer and conservationist, Deakin has an affinity to the world and to words that is priceless. "I don't want things to die, to become extinct. I want to breathe new life into things and fight to defend their life." With words and deeds, he did.
Barry Lopez (The Invitation) - "The lesson to be learned here was not just for me to pay closer attention to what was going on around me, if I hoped to have a deeper understanding of the event, but to remain in a state of suspended mental analysis while observing all that was happening - resisting the urge to define or summarize...I had to incorporate a quintessential characteristic of the way indigenous people observe: they pay more attention to patterns in what they encounter than to isolated objects."
Ben Marcus (George and Elizabeth) - "George was probably supposed to splurge on memories now. He wasn't sure he had the energy. Maybe the thing was to let the memories hurl back and cripple him, months or years from now. They needed time, wherever they were hiding, to build force, so that when they returned to smother him, he might never recover." Such a portrait of an emotionally and sexually crippled man.
Rebecca Giggs (Whale Fall) - Be wary of the green dream, of the damage done unseen many times on creatures great and small. Don't gape at the dying of the whale. Whistle him on.
Ann Beattie (Lady Neptune) - She sits on a sofa, secured by phone books and pillows, waiting for a drink and hoping that someone sees that "she was their destination, no different than arriving at the Pyramids, hardly distinguishable (except for her age) from the Fountain of Youth." Ah youth-in-age, riding the wave green.
The pictures of Helge Skodvin, introduced by Audrey Niffennegger, are almost beyond comment. Suffice it to say that taxidermy is the grossest injustice to animals and a travesty to humans who preserve their trophies despite the winning awards.
Fred Pearce (The Legacy) - a formidable recounting of the worst nuclear disaster in rural England in the 1950s. Just horrifying.
Bomb hopes gone awry for millenia.
Kathleen Jamie (Upriver) - poignant trip to Quinhagak, Alaska, to help with an archeological dig bring Jamie to trips with Yup'ik folk and she sees the land and their customs and the wrenching loss of myth and culture.
Adam Nicolson (The Hand's Breadth Murders) - Carpathian Mountain Romanians have long fought to the death for inches and feet of land in an area of dire poverty. Ends up being a history of the area and its people from WW 1 through the onslaught and demise of Communism and into the present. The pictures that follow echo the text in amazing fashion.
David Szalay (The Middle Ages: The Question of a Terminal Date) - Just simply so very sad, this portrait of a narcissist as a middle-aged scholar of...solitude and freedom...who finds neither.
Deb Olin Unferth (To The Ocean) - Going where you're told not to go may leave you better knowing what you should have done and seen and felt. "'Don't,' he said, but she would do it. She steadied herself to walk in."
The poetry (Andrew Motion, Maureen M. McLane, Ange Mlinko, Noelle Kocot) sings the song of loss and regret at all done - and not.
I'll begin with the last pieces by Roger Deakin, offered by his executor Robert Macfarlane. Writer and conservationist, Deakin has an affinity to the world and to words that is priceless. "I don't want things to die, to become extinct. I want to breathe new life into things and fight to defend their life." With words and deeds, he did.
Barry Lopez (The Invitation) - "The lesson to be learned here was not just for me to pay closer attention to what was going on around me, if I hoped to have a deeper understanding of the event, but to remain in a state of suspended mental analysis while observing all that was happening - resisting the urge to define or summarize...I had to incorporate a quintessential characteristic of the way indigenous people observe: they pay more attention to patterns in what they encounter than to isolated objects."
Ben Marcus (George and Elizabeth) - "George was probably supposed to splurge on memories now. He wasn't sure he had the energy. Maybe the thing was to let the memories hurl back and cripple him, months or years from now. They needed time, wherever they were hiding, to build force, so that when they returned to smother him, he might never recover." Such a portrait of an emotionally and sexually crippled man.
Rebecca Giggs (Whale Fall) - Be wary of the green dream, of the damage done unseen many times on creatures great and small. Don't gape at the dying of the whale. Whistle him on.
Ann Beattie (Lady Neptune) - She sits on a sofa, secured by phone books and pillows, waiting for a drink and hoping that someone sees that "she was their destination, no different than arriving at the Pyramids, hardly distinguishable (except for her age) from the Fountain of Youth." Ah youth-in-age, riding the wave green.
The pictures of Helge Skodvin, introduced by Audrey Niffennegger, are almost beyond comment. Suffice it to say that taxidermy is the grossest injustice to animals and a travesty to humans who preserve their trophies despite the winning awards.
Fred Pearce (The Legacy) - a formidable recounting of the worst nuclear disaster in rural England in the 1950s. Just horrifying.
Bomb hopes gone awry for millenia.
Kathleen Jamie (Upriver) - poignant trip to Quinhagak, Alaska, to help with an archeological dig bring Jamie to trips with Yup'ik folk and she sees the land and their customs and the wrenching loss of myth and culture.
Adam Nicolson (The Hand's Breadth Murders) - Carpathian Mountain Romanians have long fought to the death for inches and feet of land in an area of dire poverty. Ends up being a history of the area and its people from WW 1 through the onslaught and demise of Communism and into the present. The pictures that follow echo the text in amazing fashion.
David Szalay (The Middle Ages: The Question of a Terminal Date) - Just simply so very sad, this portrait of a narcissist as a middle-aged scholar of...solitude and freedom...who finds neither.
Deb Olin Unferth (To The Ocean) - Going where you're told not to go may leave you better knowing what you should have done and seen and felt. "'Don't,' he said, but she would do it. She steadied herself to walk in."
The poetry (Andrew Motion, Maureen M. McLane, Ange Mlinko, Noelle Kocot) sings the song of loss and regret at all done - and not.
May 6, 2016
Litt vanskelig ( = helt umulig) å rettferdig gi stjerner til slike samlinger, spesielt når man leser dem over fire måneder, på do, en novelle her, et dikt der, et essay der. Innbiller meg like fult at denne javnt over er svakere enn man kan forvente. Husker kun et par av historiene: en novelle jeg faktisk likte, et eller annet om hvaler og at folk veldig ofte dreper hverandre i nabofeider i Romania (?).
January 21, 2021
Stunning pieces & I will be revisiting the ones by Barry Lopez, Rebecca Giggs & Roger Deakin.
October 30, 2023
“The Fruit of My Woman” is a short-story written by the Korean writer Han Kang, and it has been recently recommended to me. I found it here, in this magazine, and I really enjoyed reading it!
I am no literary critic, but I just want to drop a few lines about some of the things I liked about this story. It is intriguing from the beginning, it has a very good hook and it makes you want to keep reading to find out more about the origin of the bruises on the woman’s body.
I think Han Kang does a fantastic job in writing from a male’s perspective, because, in the beginning, it made me hate the husband’s inflexibility, his lack of empathy and his self-centredness. The metamorphosis of this woman into a plant is done seamlessly and with an abundance of symbols and beautiful metaphors. I found it very plastic and visual. It is a multi-layered story, touching several serious matters, such as the pain of being removed from your environment, loneliness, the feeling of being estranged from everything around you, the pressure of having to comply to the social norms, the feeling of inadequacy at all levels, but more prevalent, in my opinion, the renouncing. The main character has to give up her mere essence in order to achieve an equilibrium between her inner self and the world around her. Without this adjustment, her survival is in danger, and without this renouncement, her relationship with her husband can’t be re-established.
I am no literary critic, but I just want to drop a few lines about some of the things I liked about this story. It is intriguing from the beginning, it has a very good hook and it makes you want to keep reading to find out more about the origin of the bruises on the woman’s body.
I think Han Kang does a fantastic job in writing from a male’s perspective, because, in the beginning, it made me hate the husband’s inflexibility, his lack of empathy and his self-centredness. The metamorphosis of this woman into a plant is done seamlessly and with an abundance of symbols and beautiful metaphors. I found it very plastic and visual. It is a multi-layered story, touching several serious matters, such as the pain of being removed from your environment, loneliness, the feeling of being estranged from everything around you, the pressure of having to comply to the social norms, the feeling of inadequacy at all levels, but more prevalent, in my opinion, the renouncing. The main character has to give up her mere essence in order to achieve an equilibrium between her inner self and the world around her. Without this adjustment, her survival is in danger, and without this renouncement, her relationship with her husband can’t be re-established.
March 12, 2018
Two essays stand out. 'The Lagacy'by Fred Pearce, an essay on the possible store of toxins and problems that await the UK with the dismantling of the Sellafield Nuclear plant and the terrible decisions the British government made to turn a fast buck in both its build and the taking on of other countries waste. 'The Hand's Breadth Murders' by Adam Nicholson is an essay on the violent deaths of poor farmers in the northern Carpathians over old land disputes.
April 25, 2022
Whale fall, The legacy, Upriver and The hand's breadth murders were interesting. However, I lost all interest after The hand's breadth murders and skipped the longer story at the end. I abandoned this book for months because I didn't feel motivated to read the longer story which was The middle ages, if I am not mistaken. The writing style seemed awful.
June 8, 2017
One of the better ones
Enjoyed almost all of this one. Especially the nature writing. Two stories about history professors living the past would stand on their own, but it seemed odd to have them in the same volume.
Enjoyed almost all of this one. Especially the nature writing. Two stories about history professors living the past would stand on their own, but it seemed odd to have them in the same volume.
July 22, 2016
Another excellent issue of one the best Lit Mags out there. As per usual, it is the journalism that stands out, but the fiction had some gems as well. The hilarious, yet kind of disturbing photo series from the National Taxidermy Competition in Missouri. Highlights include:
"George and Elizabeth", Ben Marcus' amusing portrait of a man dealing with his father's death, compounded on his existing ineptitude in life, compared to his sister, an immoral, yet successful CEO.
"Whale Fall" by Rebecca Giggs, a haunting description of the process and experience of witnessing the death of beached whales.
"The Legacy" by Fred Pearce about Britain's crimes against nature through their nuclear facility at Sellafield.
Adam Nicolson's "The Hand's Breadth Murders" about a remote region of Romania the high number of murders that happen there as a result of the political policies from the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.
David Szalay's "The Middle Ages: Approaching the Question of a Terminal Date" about a narcissistic linguists scholar and his relationship with a Polish newscaster. My favorite passage: "She sobs for a minute or two, quietly, while he holds her hand and tries to ignore the looks of the pensioners who are watching them now without pretence, as if, in this place where nothing ever happens, they were a piece of street theater. Which they aren't."
"George and Elizabeth", Ben Marcus' amusing portrait of a man dealing with his father's death, compounded on his existing ineptitude in life, compared to his sister, an immoral, yet successful CEO.
"Whale Fall" by Rebecca Giggs, a haunting description of the process and experience of witnessing the death of beached whales.
"The Legacy" by Fred Pearce about Britain's crimes against nature through their nuclear facility at Sellafield.
Adam Nicolson's "The Hand's Breadth Murders" about a remote region of Romania the high number of murders that happen there as a result of the political policies from the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.
David Szalay's "The Middle Ages: Approaching the Question of a Terminal Date" about a narcissistic linguists scholar and his relationship with a Polish newscaster. My favorite passage: "She sobs for a minute or two, quietly, while he holds her hand and tries to ignore the looks of the pensioners who are watching them now without pretence, as if, in this place where nothing ever happens, they were a piece of street theater. Which they aren't."
Read
November 29, 2015Another great collection. The " environmental" pieces, by Barry Lopez, on traveling with indigenous people, Rebecca Giggs, writing about a beached whale, and Fred Pearce on the nuclear disaster of Sellafield are excellent. I enjoyed Kathleen Jamie's piece on the Yup'ik of Alaska. The Hand's Breath Murders, about deadly land disputes in Romania, though well-written and accompanied by photos, seemed sensationalist. The photo essay on taxidermy was witty. The fiction in this issue was very good, particularly Deb Olin Unferth's short but profound story. Ben Marcus and David Szalay have well-written, beautifully constructed stories, though the characters get a bit tedious in both. I didn't care for Ann Beattie's work here. Of the poetry, I enjoyed Maureen N. McLane and Andrew Motion.
December 14, 2016
This issue of Granta is a tour de force. It is one of the slimmer issues, but quality reigns. The pieces are very powerful - some horrifying, some moving.
In the former category, did you know that there is a nuclear meltdown waiting to happen in northern Great Britian? I did not, until I read The Legacy. *Gulp*. The Hand's Breadth Murders is similarly grim. Whale Fall and Upriver are more moving examples in this impressive collection of essays.
For fiction, George and Elizabeth and The Middle Ages are also excellent reads.
In the former category, did you know that there is a nuclear meltdown waiting to happen in northern Great Britian? I did not, until I read The Legacy. *Gulp*. The Hand's Breadth Murders is similarly grim. Whale Fall and Upriver are more moving examples in this impressive collection of essays.
For fiction, George and Elizabeth and The Middle Ages are also excellent reads.
January 11, 2016
Liked this issue's focus on the environment. Fred Pearce's piece on the safety or lack thereof for the Sellafield nuclear site was downright scary. Also intrigued by Adam Nicolson's investigation of the murders in rural Romania. In addition, I liked the story by David Szalay. Two good issues of Granta in a row.
February 11, 2016
When I saw the author lineup for this issue, I was pretty excited, and I was not let down. Even the Ben Marcus story was not bad; he was the one author I was too keen on. I think the piece that sticks with me most is Rebecca Giggs account of a dying whale. Overall all the pieces in this collection fit nicely in the theme suggested by the title.
March 30, 2016
The nonfiction wins this one: Rebecca Giggs in particular. Her bio mentions a forthcoming book, but the net is painfully silent. Two other stand out sections are Fred Peace's story on a nuclear site in Cumbria and Adam Nicholson's piece on tiny, but frequently murderous land disputes in rural Romania.
February 11, 2016
I loved the Barry Lopez piece and the Whale Fall piece in particular. I've been reading more lit mags recently, and I love the combination of short fiction and nonfiction and poetry. A perfect little literary bundle of variety.
April 14, 2016
More thought-provoking and requiring more concentration than other issues of Granta that I've read.
A great collection that speaks of the chasm of horror and disbelief as we stand on the precipice of a difficult future that we've contributed to.
A great collection that speaks of the chasm of horror and disbelief as we stand on the precipice of a difficult future that we've contributed to.
January 17, 2016
Wasn't the strongest. 50/50 decent/dull.
January 27, 2016
interesting stories about sellafield, Romanian land squabbles, fascinating photos of taxidermy championship
February 3, 2016
Strong issue: the piece on Sellafield was fascinating, as were the photos of the national taxidermy championships.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews