The Cells, Tissues, Systems and Cavities of the Body

Jeanette Winterson

‘You were a coat of many colours wrestled into the dirt.’

Granta 39

22nd December 2008

Translated from the Klingon by Jamey Gambrell

In bereavement books they tell you to sleep with a pillow pulled down beside you. Not quite a Dutch wife, that is a bolster held between the legs in the tropics to soak up the sweat, not quite a Dutch wife. ‘The pillow will comfort you in the long unbroken hours. If you sleep you will unconsciousl…

Fiction

Granta 39

22nd December 2008

40 years of Granta

The Silkworms

Janet Frame

Peace Shall Destroy Many

Miriam Toews

Blue Sky Days

Tomas van Houtryve & Eliza Griswold

Vladimir in Love

Lara Vapnyar

The Transition

Luke Kennard

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson was born in 1959. Her first book, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, won a Whitbread Award in 1985. Her adaptation of the novel for television won a BAFTA in 1990. Her other books include The Passion (which received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Sexing the Cherry, Written on the Body, Gut Symmetries, The Powerbook and Lighthousekeeping. The Stone Gods is currently at work on a film about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Tolkas.

More about the author →

Translated by Jamey Gambrell

More about the translator →

More on Granta.com

In Conversation | The Online Edition

Podcast: Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson & Saskia Vogel

Jeanette Winterson reads from her new memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, and her story ‘All I Know About Gertrude Stein’ from Granta 115: The F Word.