Granta 122 - Betrayal

Readings by Karen Russell (Swamplandia) and Jennifer Vanderbes (Easter Island). Emceed by Granta editor John Freeman.

Survivor’s guilt. Does it live on in our scars, or can we overcome it? In two powerful new stories, Karen Russell and Jennifer Vanderbes explore the lives of two women who must face a trauma and the responsibility they feel towards it. In Vanderbes’s story, a mother tries to live with the death of her child and the idea that she could have saved her. Russell’s protagonist, a massage therapist, finds that her touch has the power to change the way a war veteran perceives his involvement in the death of a fellow soldier.