Blazing Sun
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Ants of Accra
Nii Ayikwei Parkes
‘Ants became an obsession with her – she darted with them as they changed paths, watched them find their way around obstacles placed in their way.’
The War Artist
Margaret Luongo
‘On the third day, the little rosebud teacups rattled in their saucers as the war artist poured the coffee.’
Summer with my Grandmother
A.L. Kennedy
‘And this was my grandmother, this man-destroying tyrant, this magnificent perfectionist with untireable arms and unfathomable ways of seeing.’
Going Back
Sigrid Rausing
‘We rowed towards it, further out than perhaps we should have, with the particular anarchic freedom of rowing a small rubber dinghy to sea after at least two glasses of wine.’
Toby Litt | Interview
Toby Litt & Ollie Brock
‘I wanted to write a minimalist romance, so I needed to have plenty of Love and Death. A dead human heart is both.’
The Ribbon of Valour
Hal Crowther
‘I'm sure there were defenders of raw meat and dark caves who lodged similar objections against the discovery of fire.’
Mum and Fritz
Tiffany Murray
‘That hot afternoon I lay back on Mum’s old Chesterfield, ill, and watched this new man in a blue, velvet jacket, fingers tick-tack-ticking through his record collection.’
Semiprecious
Henrietta Rose-Innes
‘The name meant that this area had not always been white. It meant that families had been removed from here.’ Henrietta Rose-Innes remembers Cape Town.
The Report
Jessica Francis Kane
‘She was both scared about what it meant – a terrible raid; everyone sensed it – and furious with herself for not planning better.’
Fork in the Road
Leila Aboulela
‘I left Sudan in 1987 – I was 23 years old and the idea of writing was the furthest thing from my mind.’
Anne Rowe | Interview
Anne Rowe
‘From her letters we learn about the woman as opposed to the writer. Iris Murdoch’s philosophy and fiction reveal her rational public face; in her letters she speaks from the heart.’
Where do we put Mark Twain?
Malcolm Jones
‘Twain does have his literary heirs, as Hemingway pointed out in his famous proclamation that all American literature comes from one book, Huck Finn.’
Elizabeth McCracken | Interview
Elizabeth McCracken
‘This week John Freeman spoke to Best Young American Novelist Elizabeth McCracken about her works-in-progress, a novel that broke up into six short stories, and her contribution to Granta’s latest issue.’
Remembered Summer
Troy Jollimore
‘Our conversations faltered, the celestial musicians / took a break between sets, and all the little engines / we had so painstakingly gathered and constructed / lapsed into stillness for a few brief moments.’
Music and Memory
Various Contributors
‘There was a time when I discovered that the best way to remember things was with the accompaniment of very loud music.’
Utterly Dylan
Patrick Ryan
‘I became mad and political and ironical almost overnight, and I started to feed on folk music.’
Finding Nusrat
Janine di Giovanni
‘We sat for sometime, and I found after a while that there was little I could say.’
Missing Out
Leila Aboulela
‘She had held the day up with pegs; not only her day but his too.’
Fiction by Leila Aboulela.
On Jupiter Place
Nicholas Christopher
‘I didn’t know who she was anymore / maybe I never did or could –’
The Book of the Dead
Janine di Giovanni
I always begin bedtime stories to my son the same way: ‘Once upon a time, a long, long time ago . . .’
Dyke Bridge
Peter Orner
‘My brother and I in the knee-deep water, standing in the tidal current, under Dyke Bridge.’
The Last Thing We Need
Claire Vaye Watkins
‘I think there will be lightning tonight; the air has that feel.’
Traces: China 1999–2010
Ian Teh
Image 1 of 42 1. 2008. Polluted river. Datong, Shanxi Province. Image 2 of 42...
Lino
Colin Grant
‘It was a big news day. We were going to look for a piece of lino for the back room.’
High and Dry
Richard Russo
‘What I’d noticed, actually, was that none of the men on the island were missing fingers.’
The Door Was Open and the House Was Dark
Seamus Heaney
‘I called his name, although I knew / The answer this time would be silence / That kept me standing listening while it grew.’
Road Trip
Owen Sheers
‘I’ve always been as surprised by what continues in Zimbabwe as much as by what has been lost; the shards of ‘normal’ life that survive in such a frayed society.’
In Goats’ Eyes is the Sky Blue?
Natsuo Kirino
‘The people locked up in Administrative Camp 16 weren’t allowed clocks. In fact there wasn’t a single clock to be found, even in communal areas.’
