I had never heard of the little Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. And yet, that’s where it all began. With an ordinary incident, one that happens frequently, but so frequently that it finally started something unstoppable.


Sign in to Granta.com.
‘You spend your life swallowing insults.’
I had never heard of the little Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. And yet, that’s where it all began. With an ordinary incident, one that happens frequently, but so frequently that it finally started something unstoppable.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘There was really no point in going to a bomb shelter just because the siren sounded. Our hotel was unlikely to be a target.’
Lindsey Hilsum writes letters home from Ukraine.
‘The recipe is a text that can produce spattering because it was spattering before it was language.’
Rebecca May Johnson on recipes, repetition and intimacy.
‘To make a subject of the very same entity I am a part of, to be outside and within it.’
Thomas Duffield photographs his family.
‘There sat the joy of the shopping centre, what I thought of as its secret heart. A white rabbit.’
A story by Dizz Tate.
‘We were ourselves migrating birds; in a sense, refugees, displaced persons, without a home or a home town.’
Volodymyr Rafeyenko (tr. Sasha Dugdale) on the war in Ukraine.
Tahar Ben Jelloun is the author of several novels including, The Sacred Night, which received the Prix Goncourt in 1987. His most recent novel is The Rising of the Ashes. He lives in Paris.
More about the author →‘He inspected the chest where the snakes slept. There was the viper, quiet, in a deep sleep.’
‘We are sitting in a cafe, on planet Earth, on the night before our wedding day.’
Fiction by Aidan Cottrell-Boyce.
‘The self is the work of art. Criticism puts that self in the service of other art.’
The authors discuss the multiplicity of the self, the idea of necessity, and how to work with what you lack.
‘Careful when you turn your eyes towards someone, you allow them the chance to turn theirs on you.’
Tice Cin on her debut novel Keeping the House.
‘There was no one around that day, so we decided to put on our bikini tops for the first time.’
An extract from Andrea Abreu’s debut novel. Translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches.
‘From contemptuous wit to unfathomable pain, the centre always held, Alan was always there.’
The copyright to all contents of this site is held either by Granta or by the individual authors, and none of the material may be used elsewhere without written permission. For reprint enquiries, contact us.