Granta 154: I've Been Away for a While deals with absence and presence, immediacy and distance in a time when these concepts are increasingly troubled. Our 2021 winter issue features Rory Gleeson on an Italian doctor who was at the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak; Lindsey Hilsum , author of the award-winning In Extremis , on cholera in Hutu refugee camps; and photography by Gus Palmer of an Islamic morgue in London, with an introduction by Poppy Sebag-Montefiore . Even more memoir comes from Ian Jack on the toxic slag heaps of Glasgow and the aristocratic lives built on them and Vidyan Ravinthiran on the civil war in Sri Lanka. A photoessay by Fergus Thomas of bareback horse racing in the Colville Reservation is accompanied by an interview with its subject, Duane Hall . Plus, an excerpt from Eva Baltasar 's Permafrost , translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanches ; a new story by Paul Dalla Rosa , previously shortlisted for the 2019 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award; an extract from the new novel by Gwendoline Riley , author of First Love ; fiction by Diaa Jubaili , translated from the Arabic by Chip Rossetti; and fiction set in Philadelphia from Dan Shurley . Plus, poetry by Jason Allen-Paisant , Jesse Darling and Nate Duke.