Granta #168

Granta 168: Significant Others

From Nobel laureates to debut novelists, international translations to investigative journalism, each themed issue of Granta turns the attention of the world’s best writers on to one aspect of the way we live now. 

This issue, is themed 'Significant Other', offering a critical insight into the innately human need to feel a bond with others and how this concept of significant other can vary from close relationships we sustain overtime or even a fleeting connection. As Meaney writes:

‘Significant other calls up the invitation from a host who wishes to strip away presumption. We insist it is a fertile concept. It was propagated in the post-war decades by the American psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan. He was convinced that we cannot develop our sense of self in isolation, and that from the earliest stages the approval and disapproval of others pushes the self in radical directions.’