Granta 154: I've Been Away for a While deals with absence and presence, immediacy and distance in a time when these concepts are increasingly troubled.

Our 2021 winter issue features Rory Gleeson on an Italian doctor who was at the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak; Lindsey Hilsum, author of the award-winning In Extremis, on cholera in Hutu refugee camps; and photography by Gus Palmer of an Islamic morgue in London, with an introduction by Poppy Sebag-Montefiore. Even more memoir comes from Ian Jack on the toxic slag heaps of Glasgow and the aristocratic lives built on them and Vidyan Ravinthiran on the civil war in Sri Lanka. A photoessay by Fergus Thomas of bareback horse racing in the Colville Reservation is accompanied by an interview with its subject, Duane Hall.

Plus, an excerpt from Eva Baltasar's Permafrost, translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanches; a new story by Paul Dalla Rosa, previously shortlisted for the 2019 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award; an extract from the new novel by Gwendoline Riley, author of First Love; fiction by Diaa Jubaili, translated from the Arabic by Chip Rossetti; and fiction set in Philadelphia from Dan Shurley.

Plus, poetry by Jason Allen-Paisant, Jesse Darling and Nate Duke.

Sigrid Rausing describes the changing world of the Estonian Swedes, and the way in which this minority identity was constructed in the various ideologies that have dominated the region since the early twentieth century. In particular she is concerned with the latest of these changes: the post-Soviet attempt to 'restore' Swedish cultural identity. Rausing touches on a wide range of issues, debates, and insights: the relationship between ideology and form, nationalist and Soviet notions of ethnicity and traditional culture and historically-framed notions of an imagined normality. The ethnographic location for these discussions is a particular former collective farm, now subject to economic decline, the Estonian nation-building ideological project, and new relationships of dependency with Sweden. One of the author's central arguments is that these changes reflect a conscious attempt to 'reform habitus' so as to match that of the local image of the West, but that the location of ethnic culture and many of the operative concepts still reflect the tropes of the Soviet era.

Four times a year, Britain's most prestigious literary magazine brings you the best new fiction, reportage, memoir, poetry and photography from around the world.

This issue features John Ryle on the worldwide conservationist struggles over white rhinos, Lynda Schuster on Pittsburgh in the wake of a synagogue shooting, Ariel Saramandi on everyday racism in Mauritius, and Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine, on his grandmother's escape from Berlin during the 1936 Olympics.

Plus, fiction by Jason Ockert, Mahreen Sohail and Ann Beattie, as well as photography by Diana Matar in Naples.

What happens after you fall in love? The essays and fiction in this issue of Granta look at the risk and reward of loving someone. 'Whatever Happened to Interracial Love' by the late African-American filmmaker Kathleen Collins, captures the atmosphere of the Civil Rights movement in New York and the dangerous risks taken by its activists. In an iconic essay 'Africa's Future Has No Place for Stupid Black Men' young Nigerian writer Pwaangulongii Daoud delivers a passionate elegy for his friend C-Boy, a gay activist in homophobic Nigeria. And Claire Hajaj describes a perilous journey from Raqqa to Allepo to Beirut, for a refugee from Islamic State. Suzanne Brogger describes the pain of being stalked; Emma Cline depicts a taut sibling relationship; Steven Dunn on a violent childhood; and Gwendoline Riley on first love. Also in this issue: FICTION Patrick Flanery, Victor Lodato; POETRY Vahni Capildeo, Melissa Lee-Houghton, Sylvia Legris and Hoa Nguyen; PHOTOGRAPHY Jacob Aue Sobol with an introduction by Joanna Kavenna

Featuring fiction by Carmen Maria Machado and non-fiction by Oliver Bullough, Granta 150 is a celebration of the power of language.

'There must be ways to organise the world with language.'
From 'Binyavanga' by Pwaangulongii Dauod

The English language is like London, a cluster of myriad villages, each with its own atmosphere and particular cadences. This issue - our 150th - celebrates language, showcasing some of the most inventive writers of fiction today.

Sidik Fofana 'The Young Entrepreneurs of Miss Bristol's Front Porch'
Amy Leach 'How to Count Like a Pro'
Mazen Maarouf 'The Story of Anya'
Carmen Maria Machado 'The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror'
Tommi Parrish 'An Instrument of Pure Motion'
Che Yeun 'Yena'

Photographer Michael Collins chronicles his mother's life following a series of strokes, Oliver Bullough investigates the invention of shell companies in the British Virgin Islands, Andrew O'Hagan visits Carolyn, Neal Cassady's widow.

Plus: Pwaangulongii Dauod's eulogy for the late Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina.

Poetry: Jack Underwood and Jay G. Ying

Photography: Noriko Hayashi, and Ian Willms introduced by Adam Foulds

Margaret Atwood, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Julian Barnes, Roberto Bolaño, Jeffrey Eugenides, Nadine Gordimer, Nick Hornby, Kazuo Ishiguro, Han Kang, Stephen King, A.L. Kennedy, Doris Lessing, Ben Marcus, Lorrie Moore, Herta Müller, Alice Munro, Gwendoline Riley, Will Self, Zadie Smith, Rebecca Solnit, John Updike, Jeanette Winterson - the voices that define a generation have all appeared in Granta. See what's next.

From 1993 to 1994, Sigrid Rausing completed her anthropological fieldwork on the penninsula of Noarootsi, a former Soviet border protection zone in Estonia. Abandoned watchtowers dotted the coastline, and the huge fields of the Lenin collective farm were laying fallow, waiting for claims from former owners who had fled war and Soviet and Nazi occupation. Rausing's research focused on the loss of historical memory during the Soviet occupation, and the slow revival of an independent Estonian culture, including the recognition of the minority Swedes in Estonia. She lived and worked amongst the villagers, witnessing their transition from repression to independence, and from Soviet neglect to post-Soviet austerity.