New Writing From Granta

Two Poems

Jana Prikryl

Bitter Tennis

Lucy Ives

Hungerwinter and Liberation

Jan Vegter

Postpartum

Geeta Tewari

If You Start Breathing

Thea Lim

Terminology

‘In Iris, they speak a language with a hundred pronouns.’ Callie Gardner on gender terminology.

The Woman Dies

Why do women always die in films? Aoko Matsuda, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton.

Akwaeke Emezi | In Conversation

An interview with Akwaeke Emezi about their debut novel, Freshwater.

Bohemian Rhapsody in Five Acts

Tiffany Murray on growing up with Queen

Ali Fitzgerald | Notes on Craft

Notes on crafting a graphic memoir from Ali Fitzgerald.

Writing Like Degas Paints

Sulaiman Addonia on how Edgar Degas’ nude portraits shaped his writing.

Lucia Berlin Writes Home

Nina Ellis on the life and writing of Lucia Berlin.

I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be

Colin Grant

'Can the black author really write out of her or his colour? In writing about black characters can they ever escape race?' Colin Grant looks at the evolution of racial politics.

The Best Books of Any Year

Best Book of 1919: The Years Between by Rudyard Kipling

Robert Chandler

Robert Chandler on why The Years Between by Rudyard Kipling is the best book of 1919

Best Book of 1966: Season of Migration to the North

Ayşegül Savaş

‘Of course, literature cannot be separated from its flesh of language and form. Nor can its tangible subject explain why it moves its reader, through the subtleties of language, or the shadowy geographies that it leaves to the imagination.’

Best Book of 2005: Zadie Smith’s On Beauty

Caoilinn Hughes

Caoilinn Hughes on why Zadie Smith’s On Beauty is the best book of 2005

Best Book of 1818: The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, by E.T.A. Hoffmann

Luke Neima

‘What sets Hoffmann’s work apart is the meeting of the joint impulses of Enlightenment and Romantic thought’

Best Book of 1953/1994: Trans-Atlantyk

Jennifer Croft

‘The most Polish novel of the twentieth century was written in Argentina and published in France.’

The Latest from Granta Books

Dionne Brand reads her contribution to Granta 141: Canada

Dionne Brand reads from ‘The Blue Clerk’, her contribution to Granta 141: Canada. ‘I will have cleaned out all of my doubt, all of my prevarication, all of my timidity.’

explore the granta archive

The Waiter’s Wife

Zadie Smith

‘Two plates smashed to the floor. She patted her stomach to indicate her unborn child and pointed to the pieces, 'Hungry?'‘

Night

Alice Munro

‘I read books as usual, nobody knew there was a thing the matter with me.’

Human Moments in World War III

Don DeLillo

‘Happiness is not a fact of this experience, at least not to the extent that one is bold enough to speak of it.’

Cousins

Angela Carter

‘The people who live in its shadow have no relation to the mountain itself’

Fellow Workers

Mary McCarthy

‘If it had not been for me, he would never have been in Mexico.’

Authors

Kathryn Scanlan | Notes on Craft

Kathryn Scanlan

‘I try to write a sentence as unbudging and fully itself as some object sitting on a shelf in my office.’

The Editor’s Chair: On Daša Drndić

Katharina Bielenberg

‘Language is always logic, no matter which language it is.’

Danny Denton | Notes on Craft

Danny Denton

‘My tuppence on craft is this: as a writer, you must give your reader space to experience the world of your story (whatever form it takes)’

Cynthia Ozick | First Sentence

Cynthia Ozick

‘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.’