Of course, I’d lied to the editors of Vogue and told them I spoke perfect French.


Sign in to Granta.com.
Of course, I’d lied to the editors of Vogue and told them I spoke perfect French.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘The slutty ingenuity of vegetables when it comes to desire and reproductive methods is a marvel.’
Rebecca May Johnson negotiates allotment culture.
‘Globalisation is incomplete: money can go anywhere, but laws cannot.’
Oliver Bullough on one of Britain’s most contested outposts: the British Virgin Islands.
‘You discover during your very first lessons that the problem of singing better involves overcoming many other problems you had not ever imagined.’
A new story from Lydia Davis.
‘She began to count; it was easier this way, counting, because she would not have to remember how she felt.’
An excerpt from Ukamaka Olisakwe’s Ogadinma.
‘Like any desert, I learn myself by what’s desired of me—
and I am demoned by those desires.’
From Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz.
Edmund White’s books include a trio of autobiographical novels, A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Farewell Symphony, as well as biographies of Jean Genet, Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. He first appeared in Granta as a translator of Milan Kundera from the French, and is now a contributing editor to the magazine. In 2018, he received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Career Achievement in American Fiction.
More about the author →‘The worst thing about knowing he was positive was that now he was under an obligation to tell his partners. Not that he informed the man he picked up in the park or the guy he lured over on the phone chatline.’
‘Once in a very great while he referred to me playfully as his ‘husband’, despite his revulsion against camp.’
A selection of Granta contributors discuss the books they read in 2012.
‘I think of the self-portrait as a mirror of all the violence that befalls us.’
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.