I don't often read magazines of new writing like Granta's but I have been fortunate enough to have bought quite a few on different subjects, which not only did I find to be particularly cheap (possibly because of being old editions) but also interesting.
Of the various short stories in this 118 Edition - Exit Strategies, whose authors I have read for the first time three stood out, The Road to Damascus by Claire Messud on the tender sketch relatated to the death of the author's father and her ties to Beirut, City Boy by Judy Chicurel on a rather poignant and moving story regarding an "abandoned" child and Thirty girls by Susan Minot which focuses on a true massive kidnapping of school girls in Uganda. Stacy Kranitz's photos are worth being looked at and the overall feeling is that every story has specific moments on which to ponder.
"To understand that most of what is, you can only imagine, and can imagine only through the often contradictory traces of what you can see. To understand that always, at the heart of things - whatever the ideas and ideologies, the violation and violence, the peculiarities of culture - always at the heart are ordinary people, and there is just life, being lived: tables and bread and toilets and scissors and cigarettes and kisses and death; just life." - on The road to Damascus by Claire Messud.
"How the audience affects a performance, how differently we behave when we know we are being watched. True authenticity (...) required an absolute nearly spiritual denial of the audience, or even the possibility of being watched." - on The Provincials by Daniel Alrcón.
"To understand that most of what is, you can only imagine, and can imagine only through the often contradictory traces of what you can see. To understand that always, at the heart of things - whatever the ideas and ideologies, the violation and violence, the peculiarities of culture - always at the heart are ordinary people, and there is just life, being lived: tables and bread and toilets and scissors and cigarettes and kisses and death; just life." - on The road to Damascus by Claire Messud.
"How the audience affects a performance, how differently we behave when we know we are being watched. True authenticity (...) required an absolute nearly spiritual denial of the audience, or even the possibility of being watched." - on The Provincials by Daniel Alrcón.
The Road to Damascus sounds like a particularly interesting narrative.
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