#Granta

‘Well-intentioned recommendations of psychoanalysts rain down upon me, but when I confess to my aversion to therapy, the responses range from rejection to pity.’

‘The circumstances could have been better but it was good to be back. He could practically taste the grip of the thick-necked men, rosy and reliably avuncular in their attempts to make him come.’

‘Psychoanalysis 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.’ Ardian Vehbiu on Jacques Lacan’s visit to Albania.

Whenever Richard mentioned Hitler, Klein unwaveringly substituted “Hitler” with “penis”. Ben Parker on Melanie Klein and child psychology.

‘My greatest mistake comes to me – the writing of this book. I want to give myself to somebody else. Give myself to somebody else – can I do it?’

‘Norén’s writing was always a work in progress – there is a feeling both in the plays and in his diaries of perpetual renewal held fast by recurring themes.’

‘More than three hundred people – mostly women – were executed.’ Maja Daniels photographs the town where Sweden’s witch trials took place.

‘I left the brothel / when I got my first writing grant / I could hardly wrap my head around / the hundred grand in my account’

‘We stand face-to-face, and rather close. He smells of wool. Ever since then I can’t help connecting the two things; the smell of wool and what he says.’ Six short stories by Helle Helle, translated by Martin Aitken.

‘In time, I became familiar with every card. One in particular fascinated me. The High Priestess.’ Fiction by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken.

‘Characteristically, its greatest writers distrust abstraction and analysis – the operations of reason itself.’ Thomas Meaney on Scandinavia.

'Intelligence and consciousness are two very different things.' Olga Ravn on technology, its relationship with humanity, and Tove Ditlevsen's influence.

‘He knows who we are, and he reads the New York Times every day, although he doesn’t retain much, except the horror of it all.’

‘What if a new interpretation endangers the self that produced it?’ Claudia Grigg Edo on therapy as re-reading.

There are two “Grantas” in the life of the thinking man or woman. There is Granta, the leading literary journal in the Anglophone world, which published the early William Empson, and is now helmed by

‘And brand-new switchblades / for future beards and defending our honour.’ A poem by Victor Heringer, translated from the Portuguese by James Young and Justin Greene.

‘The summons made clear that if I failed to turn up (which I had), a warrant could be issued for my arrest.’

‘The work was pastoral, somehow the artistic equivalent of really liking Wordsworth – just a little too pretty to be serious.’ Orlando Whitfield on taste.

‘That thing behind the door was so filthy, so repugnant, that I couldn’t imagine anyone I could call for help.’ Fiction by Marie Darrieussecq, translated by Penny Hueston.