Granta 147: 40th-Birthday Special

The Roads of London

Doris Lessing remembers her life, lovers, and landlords in London in the 1950s.

The Man with Two Heads

‘To break our trust in these memories would be a cruel thing; to question their veracity, equally cruel.’ Elena Lappin investigates Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Holocaust memoir.

A Poet in Cuba

‘Perfect totalitarian systems have always been in the vanguard: they modify not only the past and the future, but they also abolish the present.’ Reinaldo Arenas on Cuba.

Binyavanga Wainaina

Granta’s editor Sigrid Rausing remembers writer and activist Binyavanga Wainaina, who has died aged 48.

Lucy Ives and Niina Pollari In Conversation

‘Narratives are always tied to other narratives – there is no single beginning, no origin.’ Lucy Ives and Niina Pollari In Conversation.

To Zinder

Sven Lindqvist on the atrocities committed by Europe’s imperial powers in Africa.

Liz Berry and Mona Arshi In Conversation

Mona Arshi and Liz Berry discuss their latest collections, the act of transformation and writing the poems they needed to read.

Two Poems

Jennifer L. Knox

‘The Tanners are like mushrooms: born with every molecule / they’ll ever need.’

40 years of Granta

The Man with Two Heads

Elena Lappin

‘To break our trust in these memories would be a cruel thing; to question their veracity, equally cruel.’

A Poet in Cuba

Reinaldo Arenas

‘Perfect totalitarian systems have always been in the vanguard: they modify not only the past and the future, but they also abolish the present.’

Blow Your House Down

Pat Barker

‘Brenda stood up, brushing bits of gravel from her knees, and thinking, Christ, there’ve gotta be easier ways of earning a living than this.’

Mr Salary

Sally Rooney

‘My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all.’

Grandma and Me

Thomas McGuane

‘Barring weather or a World Series game, on Sundays I’d pick up a nice little box lunch from Mustang Catering and take Grandma some place that smelled good.’

The Latest from Granta Books

Devorah Baum, Josh Cohen and Anouchka Grose on the Politics of Feeling

Devorah Baum, Josh Cohen and Anouchka Grose on the ways in which feelings have come to affect our political opinions, the complexities of democracy, and the competing pulls of activism, inertia and despair.