Granta Audio: Sam Byers

Alongside established figures including Mario Vargas Llosa and Mark Haddon, the current issue of the magazine, Britain, introduces a startling new talent, Sam Byers. Here he reads from ‘Some Other Katherine’ and talks to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about turning office life into fiction, writing women and coming to terms with one’s Britishness.

Katherine met with Keith only on selected evenings. They fucked and drank in heroic silence, which suited Katherine. She lived in fear of him saying something interesting, which might make her fall in love with him; or something horrific, which would shatter the illusion she’d so carefully constructed. He brought her a vibrator as a present: gift-wrapped, with a heart-shaped tag that read, ‘Think of me.’ She donated it, tag and all, to her local charity shop. She never saw it for sale, and wondered often what had become of it. She liked to think one of the elderly volunteers had taken it home one lonely evening and subjected herself to an experience so revelatory as to border on the mystical.

This is an extract from ‘Some Other Katherine’ by Sam Byers in Granta 119: Britain. You can pre-order a copy or subscribe and receive four issues a year of the best new writing.