This issue of Granta is about the difference between the world as we see it and the world as it actually is, beyond our faulty memories and tired understanding. It's also about the borderlands of politics and reason, and of reality and transcendence, in contested territories.

Ludmila Ulitskaya's diary of cancer treatment in Russia and Israel

Raja Shehadeh on emptying his mother's house in Ramallah

Janine di Giovanni remembers Iraq before and after the American invasion

Charles Glass on the jihadist occupation of an Armenian village in Syria

Fiction by Jesse Ball, Kevin Canty, Jon Fosse, Sebastià Jovani, China Miéville, Ottessa Moshfegh and Tracy O'Neill

Poetry by John Ashbery, Peter Gizzi, Kathryn Maris and Sandra Simonds

Photography by Noémie Goudal and Ian Teh

Plus: The second act of Anne Carson's TV show, 'Krapp Hour'