Granta

In this edition of the Granta Podcast, editor Ka Bradley speaks with Madeleine Thien about her book, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which has recently been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. They talk about translating the sensation of music for a reader, the importance of writing about women of colour, and the Chinese conceptual framework of time.

In this edition of the Granta podcast we speak to Astrid Alben, who reads a selection from her book of poetry Plainspeak, discusses her work as a translator and as an editor of the interdisciplinary journal Pars, shares a poem by Valérie Rouzeau – translated from the French by Susan Wicks – and explains how she develops her poetic alter ego.

In our latest podcast, Joanna Walsh discusses the Irish Writing Boom with Sarah Davis-Goff of Tramp Press; Susan Tomaselli, editor of Gorse Journal; and Amy Herron of the Irish Writers' Centre. They touch on the culture and history of Ireland’s literary journals; short story culture; the fight against marketing departments and the work of fostering literary innovation.

Sally Rooney and Joanna Walsh: The Granta Podcast, Ep. 80 by Granta Magazine

Ireland has one of the world's most distinguished literary traditions. In Granta 135: New Irish Writing, we showcase contemporary Irish fiction, memoir, poetry and photography.For the launch of the issue, Granta and Foyles hosted Peggy Hughes, Sally Rooney, Lucy Caldwell and Sara Baume in a discussion about their work, the state of Irish writing and the place of technology in literature. Audio production by Adam Barr.

Last year we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, but the legacy of war and communism lives on in eastern Europe. In the new issue of Granta – No Man’s Land – Peter Pomerantsev writes about propaganda in Ukraine’s Donbas region, where pro-Russian activists battle with pro-Ukrainian, pro-democracy activists and Ukrainian nationalists, whilst Philip Ó Ceallaigh tells the devastating story of the Communist destruction of Old Bucharest. They joined us for the launch of the new issue at the Frontline Club in London.Both writers encounter people who are longing for a strong leader to bring back security and pride. They discussed whether, following the challenges to democratic structures in Russia, Hungary, and most recently Poland, eastern Europe’s new democracies are at risk.Chaired by author and journalist Oliver Bullough, who lived and worked in Russia from 1999 – 2006. He is author of two books about Russian history and politics: The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame Be Great.Pe

Neel Mukherjee and Patrick deWitt discuss their books, Undermajordomo Minor and The Lives of Others, subconscious influence, the power of the exclamation mark and love.

Hiromi Kawakami is a novelist, haiku poet, literary critic and essayist. Her books include 'Manazuru, Pasuta mashiin yūrei' ('Pasta Machine Ghosts') and 'Sensei no kaban' ('The Briefcase'), published as 'Strange Weather in Tokyo' by Portobello Books in the UK. She was awarded the 1996 Akutagawa Prize for 'Hebi o fumu' (Tread on a Snake).Here, she talks to Granta Books editor Anne Meadows on her essay for Granta 127: Japan, the presence of death in her work and the influence of Gabriel García Márquez, with interpretation by Asa Yoneda.'I never really thought about death or mortality, but coming to terms with this diagnosis, or the probability of this diagnosis, I realised that, medically speaking, death can always be thought of not as a certainty, but as a probability. Looking back, I never was aware of feeling that close to death, but actually if you think about it, just living every day there is a very small but definitely existing chance of de

Ruth Ozeki is the author of 'My Year of Meats', 'All Over Creation' and 'A Tale for the Time Being', which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. For Granta’s Japan issue, she wrote an essay on her grandfather: about a mysterious photograph she has of him and about the ways she feels linked to him across time.In the latest Granta podcast, she reads from the piece and discusses it alongside her latest novel, 'A Tale for the Time Being', touching on haiku, feminist Buddhist nuns, memory, the idea of cultural gyres and why and how she wrote herself into her book.'I'm mixed race, I'm kind of like the meeting point between these two cultures and these two histories. And somehow that is in my DNA, and growing up mixed race, it always did feel like there was a tension there between the two halves. And I never was quite sure who I was or who I was supposed to be... it seemed very odd and unstable to be who I was.&apos

In the latest Granta podcast, Mark Gevisser and Jonny Steinberg discuss recent South African history, their personal relationship to Johannesburg, and their personal relationship to a divided city. Mark Gevisser is the author of 'A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream', published by Palgrave Macmillan in the UK, and by Jonathan Ball in South Africa under the title, 'Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred'. His latest book, 'Dispatcher', is published by Granta. Jonny Steinberg is the author of several books about South Africa's transition to democracy. His next book, 'A Man of Good Hope', will be published in January 2015. He teaches African Studies and Criminology at the University of Oxford.‘Johannesburg is such an enormously contradictory place, it’s a place of great fear it’s a place of high walls and electric fences, and yet it is also a place of wall-lessness in such profound ways… it is a very mercurial place, it’s of great fea

Lindsey Hilsum is International Editor of Channel Four News and the author of ‘Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution’.In 1994 she was the only English-speaking Foreign Correspondent working in Rwanda when the genocide began. Her essay in the latest issue of Granta tells of her return to the country 19 years after the conflict.Here we talk about her time in Rwanda, Libya and how countries can repair in the aftermath of war. The podcast begins with Lindsey reading from her essay ‘The Rainy Season’, in Granta 125: After the War.‘I think that for me there were a lot of things that were unresolved which I tried to resolve by going back and by writing, but maybe I have to accept that some things will never be resolved.’

In the latest Granta podcast, we’re joined by Juan Pablo Villalobos, author of 'Down the Rabbit Hole', which was nominated for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award and, most recently, 'Quesadillas'.Here, Villalobos talks about parodying Mexican identity, the difficulty of translation and class struggle in Mexico. ‘The worst thing wasn’t being poor; the worst thing was having no idea of the things you can do with money.’

Eleanor Catton’s debut novel, The Rehearsal, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and the Dylan Thomas Prize, longlisted for The Orange Prize and received a Betty Task award. Her second novel, The Luminaries, has been shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker prize. Here, Granta Books editor Anne Meadows talks to Catton about opium sand gold, the ideas of the modern and the archaic, whether a good author can also be a sadist, and what it means to be a New Zealand writer today. ‘I am very firm in the belief that literature is not a competitive sport, we’re all doing the same thing, and hopefully for similar reasons.’

Granta speaks to Lina Wolff, author of the story collection 'Många människor dör som du' ('Many Pepole Die Like You') and the novel 'Bret Easton Ellis och de andra hundarna' ('Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs'). Wolff writes in Swedish, and her story in the issue is based in Spain. Here she discusses the tension she felt between a ‘Spanishness’ and ‘Swedishness’, when writing and between a rational way of being and a magical way of thinking. She also discusses Lorca, Dante, literary travellers and their guides and the idea of irrationality and the artistic temperament. ‘I think in the beginning it was a crisis. I started to write because I felt the need to fit in, and not be an outsider... I have felt bound to an outsideness and an otherness.’ Image © Håkan Sandbring. 

In the latest Granta podcast, Saskia Vogel speaks to Sonia Faleiro, a contributor to the Travel issue and a reporter. Faleiro is the author of a book of fiction, The Girl, and one book of non-fiction, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars. She talks about how her gender influences her work and how she started out as a reporter. She also discusses the way we tell stories about women who use their bodies in to earn a living, Bombay’s complex sex industry and the idea of marginalized narratives.‘How we perceive people eventually influences what rights we think they deserve to be given, when there is actually no question of endowing someone with rights; you either have them or you don’t.’

In the latest Granta podcast, Rachael Allen speaks to travel writer Robert Macfarlane. Macfarlane is the author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places and most recently, The Old Ways. Macfarlane talks about ‘Underland’, his essay in Granta 124: Travel, which sees him exploring the underground caves of Karst country, and the different approaches writers take to show landscape through language. ‘When you're dealing with a geological context,’ says Macfarlane ‘its age exceeds your knowing, exceeds your comprehension. Deep time is dizzying and vertiginous.’

In the latest Granta podcast, Yuka Igarashi speaks to writer, journalist and activist Rebecca Solnit. Solnit is the author of numerous books about art, landscape, ecology and politics. They include A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; Infinite City, a book of 22 maps with nearly 30 collaborators; and, most recently The Faraway Nearby, published this June. Solnit discusses how her new book interweaves personal narratives about family and illness with stories about Mary Shelley and Che Guevara. We also talk about her interest in paradoxes and her momentary connection to Beyonce.

In the latest Granta podcast, Yuka Igarashi talks to A.M. Homes, the recipient of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction for May We Be Forgiven. Homes is the author of the novels This Book Will Save Your Life, Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers and Jack; the story collections The Safety of Objects and Things You Should Know; and the memoir The Mistress’s Daughter (Granta Books). As a followup to an interview when May We Be Forgiven was published, they spoke about what winning the prize means to her. They also discussed family and the American Dream as themes in her book, why the Korean translation of one of her novels comes with a coupon for Dunkin Donuts, and the influence that her writing teacher Grace Paley had on her work and life.

On the latest Granta podcast we hear from George Saunders. One of the finest, funniest writers of his generation, he writes stories that pulse with outsized heart, crackle with the ad-speak and eek out the human story from the lives of theme-park workers and the subjects of strange drug tests that enhance libido and eloquence. His books include CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, In Persuasion Nation, Pastoralia and most recently Tenth of December. He has also published a book of essays, The Braindead Megaphone. Here he spoke to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about allowing his characters access to goodness, why he wants to avoid ‘auto-dark’ in his stories, how the death of David Foster Wallace affected his writing and closing the gap between art and life.

The final in our series of podcasts featuring the Best of Young British Novelists 4, we hear from Tahmima Anam. Anam is the author of the Bengal Trilogy, which chronicles three generations of the Haque family from the Bangladesh war of independence to the present day. Her debut novel, A Golden Age, was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. It was followed in 2011 by The Good Muslim. ‘Anwar Gets Everything’, in the issue, is an excerpt from the final instalment of the trilogy, Shipbreaker, published in 2014 by Canongate in the UK and HarperCollins in the US. Here she spoke to Saskia Vogel about making a home in London and migration.