Book excerpt: This issue of Granta is about time and about ghosts - the ghosts of our past selves, the shadows of past injuries, the ghosts of history, the ghosts in the machine. André Aciman remembers Rome Ahmet Altan on his life sentence Bernard Cooper on Ambien and sleep-eating Maggie O'Farrell on damaging her 'sacred' joint Vasily Grossman's Stalingrad, a companion to his epic Life and Fate Amos Oz in conversation with Shira Hadad Inigo Thomas on the fall of Singapore PLUS NEW FICTION from Anne Carson, Steven Dunn, Sheila Heti, Eugene Lim, Sandra Newman, Maria Reva and Jess Row POETRY from Cortney Lamar Charleston and Jana Prikryl PHOTOGRAPHY from Monika Bulaj, with an introduction by Janine di Giovanni