Granta 63: Beasts

THE SCENE OF THE CRIME: Genocide is a word that has haunted this century, but its definition is contentious and our memory of it selective. A photographic essay by Simon Norfolk introduced by Michael Ignatieff.

BEASTS: what they make of us, and how they shape us. Including Paul Auster living a dog's life; Hilary Mantel on a mongrel breed; Sam Toperoff as a tarantula ('Why would we poison anything we weren't going to eat?')

NEW FICTION: from John Barth, T.C. Boyle, Jackie Kay, and Martin Amis ('Love without words. A caveman could do it. And it sounded like something that Picasso or Beckett might have pulled off. But Sir Rodney Peel?')

MY FROZEN FATHER: a memory of South Africa by Deborah Levy

PUNISHMENT: witnessed in the USA and in Pakistan by Joyce Carol Oates and Anwar Iqbal ('Although I had been writing against public flogging ever since it began, I wanted to watch it.')