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‘In the 1930s I wanted to travel and I wanted to write. In 1935, I published my first book—about a journey to Spain’.
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‘The issue was the first of its kind. Trust me, it said. I know what I am talking about. These young writers are the future of literature. Watch. History will prove me right.’ – Bill Buford, Granta editor (1979-95)
‘Cover your nose and mouth, the order came, swift and useless; if they’d had their turbans they would have wound them around their faces but there were only the balaclavas.’
Fiction by Kamila Shamsie from the 2013 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘She felt exhausted, emptied out; she thought of the day that had passed – it was astonishing to her, that a single set of hours could contain so many separate states of violent feeling.’
Fiction by Sarah Waters from the 2003 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘This is the one thing I know from the minute I lift the receiver and slip that voice inside my ear: it will happen.’
Fiction by A.L. Kennedy from the 1993 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘As it was, my grandfather began helping me to paint without my having to ask him.’
Fiction by Kazuo Ishiguro from the 1983 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
Norman Lewis died in 2003 at the age of 95. He was the author of thirteen novels and fifteen books of travel and memoir. ‘An Amateur Spy in Arabia’, which was published in Granta 73, was taken from his final book, A Voyage by Dhow.
More about the author →‘From the age of five I attended Forty Hill Church School. Studies began every day with half an hour's catechism.’
‘In the winter of 1957, I went to Liberia for the New Yorker.’
'I met Ian Fleming at Cape's annual party. Jonathan Cape made no secret of disliking Fleming, had read only the first chapter of Casino Royale and nothing whatever of his subsequent books.'
‘Little surprise was aroused when the model chosen for the new Hat Yai was Dodge City of the 1860s as revealed by the movies.’
‘Essex is the ugliest county. I only went there to be able to work in peace and quiet and get away from the settlers from London south of the river.’
‘We live in these places out of necessity, lucky to have them out of the terrible explosion of humanity.’
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