Granta

The Cost of Writing | Tariq Mir | Granta ‘Even a modest expression of one’s view is now judged a seditious act, liable to attract terrorism charges.’ Tariq Mir on journalism in Kashmir.

‘Police raids have become a method of stripping journalists of the tools of their craft.’

Tariq Mir on journalism in Kashmir.

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Hoesamuis | Duboree Das | Granta ‘After a conversation with her gynaecologist who shares the same name, Mandovi is diagnosed with a UTI. Doctor Mandovi tells Mandovi it’s normal, that she shouldn’t feel any shame, which makes…

‘Mandovi had thought marriage would be an ergonomic solution to loneliness, a bit like a neck pillow. Functional, if a little unfashionable.’ 

Fiction by Duboree Das.

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Hoesamuis | Duboree Das | Granta ‘After a conversation with her gynaecologist who shares the same name, Mandovi is diagnosed with a UTI. Doctor Mandovi tells Mandovi it’s normal, that she shouldn’t feel any shame, which makes…

‘Dressed in a neon green singlet over Bermuda shorts, Swastika’s a parody of a Zara poster. She’s older; forty, while they’re in their mid-thirties. Mandovi, however, considers the gulf separating them vast.’ 

Fiction by Duboree Das.

granta.com/hoesamuis/

We are pleased to reveal the cover and contributors to Granta 174: Therapy.

We live in a therapeutic age. In this issue, writers explore the talking cure and alternative forms of therapy.

The issue publishes 12 February 2026.

Urdu ‘The word I used – janamdin, not saalgira – gave me away as someone who could only have grown up in India.’ Aatish Taseer on Urdu, Hindi and the cultural intricacies of sister languages.

At Granta, Aatish Taseer has a thoughtful essay on the small, yet all-defining, distinctions between the Urdu of Pakistan and the Hindi of India: "two fluid, shape-shifting sisters, yin and yang, each containing a measure of the other" granta.com/urdu/

Folding Your Mother | Bhavika Govil | Granta ‘Slowly we had developed a ritual. My mother liked to have a cup of tea, be steam pressed, and then placed into the bag every night. Her bones ached and she said that she was looking for respite.’

‘Slowly we had developed a ritual. My mother liked to have a cup of tea, be steam pressed, and then placed into the bag every night. Her bones ached and she said that she was looking for respite.’  

Fiction by Bhavika Govil.

granta.com/folding-your...

We are pleased to reveal the cover and contributors to Granta 174: Therapy.

We live in a therapeutic age. In this issue, writers explore the talking cure and alternative forms of therapy.

The issue publishes 12 February 2026.

Hoesamuis | Duboree Das | Granta ‘After a conversation with her gynaecologist who shares the same name, Mandovi is diagnosed with a UTI. Doctor Mandovi tells Mandovi it’s normal, that she shouldn’t feel any shame, which makes…

‘Ko Samui looks like it has been raised over the rubble of fishing villages. A shiny skein of roads, resorts, shops and eateries fist the island. Everywhere else, coconut trees.’  

Fiction by Duboree Das. 

granta.com/hoesamuis/

Three Poems ‘the day after a disappearance / the uncles are tired and hushed / spending lunch breaks in their cars’ Three poems by Priya Bains, translated by Alex Mepham.

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Here are three sample poems of Priya Bains’ work in GRANTA, translated by Alex from Norwegian. 🙏🏼

The Black Sheep ‘And then one day – nobody knows how – an honest man appeared.’ Fiction by Italo Calvino in Granta 46: Crime.

I just realized Granta has a collection of stories on their site. Cute 1 pager from Italo Calvino:

"There was once a country where everyone was a thief.

At night each inhabitant went out armed with a crowbar and a lantern, and broke into a neighbour’s house..."

granta.com/the-black-sh...

Folding Your Mother | Bhavika Govil | Granta ‘Slowly we had developed a ritual. My mother liked to have a cup of tea, be steam pressed, and then placed into the bag every night. Her bones ached and she said that she was looking for respite.’

‘Every few hours, after hanging the foldable bag in our bedroom wardrobe, I pressed my ear close to the plastic to listen to the sound of her breathing.’

Fiction by Bhavika Govil.

granta.com/folding-your...

Hoesamuis | Duboree Das | Granta ‘After a conversation with her gynaecologist who shares the same name, Mandovi is diagnosed with a UTI. Doctor Mandovi tells Mandovi it’s normal, that she shouldn’t feel any shame, which makes…

‘Outside Karma Resort, there is a large, gilded mirror framed in plastic grass. Reflected in it are the Hoesamuis as they take a selfie. The flash captures them frozen between smile and shock. They christen it retro.’ 

Fiction by Duboree Das. 

granta.com/hoesamuis/

Gosh, took a break from writing to read this. Powerful, skilful writing by a new writer to me - Bhavika Govil. Will look out for more of her work. 🤩

Sudheer’s Mother | Vivek Shanbhag | Granta ‘She had resolved to get married to anyone they found and seek her own calling later.’

‘Didn’t she know that the world was standing on its heels to punish a girl who had grown beyond her limits?’

A short story by Vivek Shanbhag, translated by Deepa Ganesh.

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Folding Your Mother | Bhavika Govil | Granta ‘Slowly we had developed a ritual. My mother liked to have a cup of tea, be steam pressed, and then placed into the bag every night. Her bones ached and she said that she was looking for respite.’

‘I zipped my mother up night after night and watched her slip into oblivion.’

Fiction by Bhavika Govil.

granta.com/folding-your...

Tolerable Disorder | Granta ‘There is a loveliness, I think, in the existence of brackets as a pair.’ Rebecca Perry on parentheses.

‘There is a surety in it, like swans on a pond. However long the diversion, however delightful or distracting, the second bracket will always appear.’

Rebecca Perry on parentheses.

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Folding Your Mother | Bhavika Govil | Granta ‘Slowly we had developed a ritual. My mother liked to have a cup of tea, be steam pressed, and then placed into the bag every night. Her bones ached and she said that she was looking for respite.’

‘Where once existed a sixty-five-year-old somewhat heavy-set woman with thin-framed spectacles and hair only slightly greying at the sides, there was now a compressed and gleaming plastic bag.’ 

Fiction by Bhavika Govil.

granta.com/folding-your...

Children’s Tales | Amitava Kumar | Granta ‘The voiceover said that while the earliest prisoners sent to the island were dangerous criminals, a new brand of inmates at the Cellular Jail were revolutionaries – they came to prison “as if they…

'Great Nicobar could not be understood from Great Nicobar. It had to be understood from far-off places like Mumbai and Delhi.’

Amitava Kumar on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

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Under the Ruins | Raghu Karnad | Granta ‘The footage of Modi’s dive, however, only shows the submerged prime minister; nothing of the submerged city.’ Raghu Karnad on the Mahabharata and the relationship between archeology and nationalism.

‘The footage of Modi’s dive, however, only shows the submerged prime minister; nothing of the submerged city.’

Raghu Karnad on the relationship between archaeology and nationalism.

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Indian Temptations | Sanjay Subrahmanyam | Granta ‘I understand that there is a temptation to bring everything in India, whether it’s literature, music or art, around to its relationship to nationalism. But as my friends in the art world have always…

‘This mania with banning and censorship goes back a long way, and concerns both books and films. Repressive colonial habits die hard.’

Granta interviews Sanjay Subrahmanyam on Indian history, literature, and his intellectual trajectory.

granta.com/indian-tempt...

The Thin Red Corridor | Snigdha Poonam | Granta ‘There is no comfort in driving down a road once lined with landmines, even if your companion is the one who put them there.’ Snigdha Poonam meets an Adivasi Maoist who shows her how the state has…

‘With no doctors, no electricity, no running water, no paved roads, no functioning school, and no sewage system – the insurgents were not so much co-opting a society as building one.’ 

Snigdha Poonam visits Jharkhand and the Naxalites.

granta.com/the-thin-red...

Kazhumaadan | Jeyamohan | Granta ‘Two men set about undressing him. They led the naked boy by the hand, sat him down on the clay platform, spread their palms across his shoulders, and pressed him down.’

‘Two men set about undressing him. They led the naked boy by the hand, sat him down on the clay platform, spread their palms across his shoulders, and pressed him down.’ 

Fiction by Jeyamohan, translated by Priyamvada Ramkumar.

granta.com/jeyamohan/

Under the Ruins | Raghu Karnad | Granta ‘The footage of Modi’s dive, however, only shows the submerged prime minister; nothing of the submerged city.’ Raghu Karnad on the Mahabharata and the relationship between archeology and nationalism.

'Narendra Modi, seventy-three, had a spherical aquatic helmet placed over his head. He was lowered into the waves.’

Raghu Karnad on Modi and an alleged underwater Hindu archaeological site.

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Podcast | Karan Mahajan | Granta ‘People are inchoate, irrational – constantly on the verge of discovering who they are and then swerving away at the last moment.’ Karan Mahajan on writing about politics in fiction, the Khalistani…

‘People are inchoate, irrational – constantly on the verge of discovering who they are and then swerving away at the last moment.’

The latest episode of the Granta podcast features Karan Mahajan and is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts now.

granta.com/podcast-kara...

The Poetry in Translation Prize | 2025 | Granta The Poetry in Translation Prize, founded by Fitzcarraldo Editions, New Directions and Giramondo, is a...

ICYMI: @grantamag.bsky.social published poems from the Poetry in Translation Prize shortlist. The inaugural winner of the prize will be announced in January 2026. Read them here: granta.com/the-poetry-i...

A Year in Reading 2025 | Granta Friends and contributors to the magazine share their year in reading.

Granta contributors and friends reflect on their year in reading.

granta.com/a-year-in-re...

The Poetry in Translation Prize | 2025 | Granta The Poetry in Translation Prize, founded by Fitzcarraldo Editions, New Directions and Giramondo, is a...

In partnership with Fitzcarraldo Editions, Giramondo and New Directions, Granta is pleased to presents extracts from the eight shortlisted collections for the Poetry in Translation Prize 2025.

granta.com/the-poetry-i...

A Year in Reading, Granta Staff Picks Granta Staff looks back on what we've read in 2025.

Granta magazine is now on Substack. Follow to receive exclusive material, starting with Granta staff’s recommendations on the best books they read this year.

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Doubting Thomas | Grace Byron | Granta ‘As kids raised in the church, were supposed to be content to live in a world of answers, all neatly laid out in hymnals and Vacation Bible School.’ Grace Byron on faith, rebellion and asking…

‘Rhetorical questions in contemporary fiction and memoir offer a different ideology, something that hews closer to the Jewish mystic tradition of asking questions at Passover or the contemplative prayer of Trappist monk Thomas Merton.’

Grace Byron on asking questions.

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I've just read this story, and it's so good! Such a perfect portrayal of the narrator through his thoughts. I now want to read more by Vivek Shanbhag.

#shortstory #storytelling