Rome in the year A.D. 590. A plague is tearing through the city. Pope Pelagius II is dead. Outside the walls, Lombard soldiers are raising their swords. What can save the Eternal City? All eyes, and all hopes, are on the next pope. Veteran writer Sigrid Grabner tells the dramatic story of Pope Gregory I—a poor monk known now to history as Saint Gregory the Great. Born to a noble family and trained in Roman law, Gregory had been prefect of the city of Rome as a young man, but he gave up his power and wealth to walk in the footsteps of Saint Benedict. Everything changed when he was raised, against his will, to the highest office in Christendom and found himself, as he wrote to one friend, "in the eye of a storm"; at the helm of an "old and rotten ship". Although Gregory sensed only his inadequacy, he not only steered Rome clear of a shipwreck, but laid the foundations for the future of Europe. In fourteen years as pope, he instituted sweeping financial reforms, ensured legal protection for the poor, developed a system of musical notation, wrote influential works of theology, quieted the Byzantines and the warring Lombards, and led a citywide pilgrimage to the church of Saint Mary Major that, tradition says, brought an end to the plague. Grabner''s vivid narrative of the life of Pope Gregory I reads like a novel, evoking the landscape of early medieval Italy with humanity and realism. It brings us face-to-face with a man who, for all his weakness, became an instrument in the hand of God and let himself be made great.
Jason Cowley: it wasn't a 'Brexit' murder David Flusfeder: the last shopkeepers of London Charles Glass: in Palmyra Stephen Sharp: Mother's death Sana Valiulina: remembers her father, a Gulag prisoner Anthony Doerr: on Edward Burtynsky New fiction from: Brian Allen Carr, Joshua Cohen, Ho Sok Fong, A.M. Homes and Susan Straight Photography by: Edward Burtynsky, Don McCullin and Gus Palmer Poetry: Will Harris, Nathaniel Mackey and Chelsea Minnis
From Nobel laureates to debut novelists, international translations to investigative journalism, each issue of Granta turns the attention of the world's best writers on to one aspect of the way we live now.
Granta 158: In the Family features Fatima Bhutto on grief and loss; Chris Dennis on his teenage relationship with an older man; Charif Majdalani (trans. Ruth Diver) on the fragmenting situation in Beirut and Will Rees on a journey through the NHS in search of a diagnosis. This winter issue includes fiction by Nathan Harris, Julie Hecht, Sheila Heti, Moses McKenzie, Debbie Urbanski and Kate Zambreno, as well as poetry by Akwaeke Emezi, Claire Schwartz and Dawn Watson. A poem by Rachel Long introduces a photoessay by Lewis Khan, and Damian Le Bas introduces a photoessay made by the Herak family.
Sigrid Nunez omschrijft in de roman ‘Sempre Susan’ haar kennismaking met de legendarische essayist en intellectueel Susan Sontag. Deze stelde Nunez voor aan haar zoon, de schrijver David Rieff, met wie Nunez een relatie kreeg. Algauw trok ze bij hem in, in de woning die Rieff en Sontag deelden. Sontag zei daarover tegen Nunez: ‘Wie zegt dat we moeten leven als alle anderen?’ Sontag zou Nunez, die mettertijd een succesvol schrijfster werd, diepgaand beïnvloeden. Ze stak de mensen om haar heen als vanzelf aan met haar vele culturele en intellectuele passies. In deze indringende, intieme herinneringen, die ruim zes jaar na Sontags dood verschenen, benoemt Nunez haar dankbaarheid voor het feit dat ze al jong ‘iemand die zo’n verheven, niet-ironische kijk had op het beroep van schrijver’ als voorbeeld heeft mogen hebben.
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