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Photograph by Philip Oltermann
Philip Oltermann spoke to Ollie Brock for the Granta Podcast about English bathrooms and German car engines, and how his experience as an outsider became the nexus of his forthcoming book.
To listen to the podcast, either click on the player below, or visit our iTunes page, where you can subscribe to make sure you receive every episode.
Photograph by Philip Oltermann
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
Philip Oltermann is an editor on the Guardian's comment desk, and the author of Keeping Up With the Germans: A History of Anglo-German Encounters.
More about the author →‘I love that image. Me flying over Germany, throwing sex bombs into people’s minds.’
‘Some stories begin with an incident, or a set of enigmatic circumstances, or a scene indelibly witnessed, or the relationship of unlike temperaments, or even something as gossamer as a mood. And then there is the kind of story that is rooted in an idea.’
‘Hot and hopeful under the May sun, air crinkling above the highway. Except my Ford Escort didn't care for the heat and flatlined a few hundred yards from home.’
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