Granta | The Home of New Writing

Lion and Panther in London

Capital Gains

Rana Dasgupta

‘The society that has emerged in post-liberalization India is one consumed both by euphoria and dread.’

From the Journals of Mahmoud Darwish 1941–2008

Mahmoud Darwish

‘I’m alive even though I feel no pain.’

Reality, Reality

Jackie Kay

‘Now that – that is bursting with flavour.’

The Rule of Tagame

Kenzaburō Ōe

‘Kogito was lying on the narrow army cot in his study, his ears enveloped in giant headphones, listening intently.’

Call Me By My Proper Name

Rupert Thomson

‘My mother’s brother was christened Cedric, but people always called him Joe.’

Airships

Javier Marías

‘We live in an age that tends to depersonalize even people and is, in principle, averse to anthropomorphism.’

The Mind-Child: Remembering J.G. Ballard

Will Self

‘I had been struggling – as every wannabe writer should – with what it was that I could conceivably write.’

Will Self on the influence of J.G. Ballard.

A Sign of Weakness

Terrence Holt

‘Fast asleep, even comatose, a living body moves.’

Body Snatchers

William T. Vollmann

‘The All-American Canal was now dark black with phosphorescent streaks where the border’s eyes stained it with yellow tears.’

One Ridge Over

Josh Weil

‘Some mornings I see him coming up through the mist. The grey shape of a long-haired man carrying a long-barreled gun amid the bare grey branches of the old apple trees.’

Where I’m Calling From

Ariel Leve

‘Pretentiousness was non-existent. Morals were unambiguous and pure.’

Eleanor Catton | Interview

Eleanor Catton

Eleanor Catton, author of the critically acclaimed, Betty Trask-award-winning debut novel, The Rehearsal, talks to Granta.

Growing up with the King of Pop

Marlon James

‘The thrill of Thriller was being part of something global and local at once.’

Beginning, End | New Voices

Jessica Soffer

‘I walked behind you. You led the rallies. I lost my mother. You rubbed my back.’

After the Affair

Maud Newton & Alexander Chee

‘Reading it, I thought, this must be what it was like to be his lover. To wait and wait for him to eventually say something to you, while he talked about everything else.’

Ha Jin | Interview

Ha Jin & Helen Gordon

‘My reason for writing in English is twofold: to separate my existence from the state power of China and to preserve the integrity of my work.’

A question of identity

Dubravka Ugrešić

‘One of the first things a child learns is the sentiment: My country is… And so begins the homeland briefing that lasts from the cradle to the grave.’

Tales From Literary Festivals

Anita Sethi

‘The imagination can also be a passport to places beyond the realms of our own experience, a lesson learned at festivals which have at their core the concept of storytelling.’

Jhumpa Lahiri and Mavis Gallant

Jhumpa Lahiri, Mavis Gallant & Rosalind Porter

‘Gallant is considered one of the greatest short-story writers of all time’.

John Freeman | Interview

John Freeman & Roy Robins

‘I think you know right away if a piece of writing is good. Does it move me? Does it have intensity? Is it beautiful?’

A Summer’s Evening in Beijing

Elizabeth Pisani

‘The air is light with the intoxicating fumes of impending martyrdom.’

Proximity People

Jonathan Lethem

‘People who unfriend their friends while friending their unfriends. People who do not acknowledge the person. Persons who are not personal.’

Love in the Time of Swine Flu

Alexis Okeowo

‘Being mask-less in the constant sea of blue surgical face masks made me feel like I was an extra on a movie set they forgot to put in costume.’

Editor’s Letter

Alex Clark

‘In 1979, when Bill Buford introduced his first issue of Granta, a penetrating, bravura survey of American fiction, he proclaimed his efforts to be ‘a kind of energetic failure’.’

Rhyme and Reason

Katha Pollitt & Adam Gopnik

‘I write for people who like poetry. The people who don’t like poetry are on their own.’

Three Poems

Katha Pollitt

‘Nobody wanted to hear / about the rain or its father / or leviathan slicing the deeps / at the black edge of the world / under the cold blue light of the Pleiades.’

Letter from Gaza

Hisham Matar

‘It is difficult not to see the assassination of Ghassan Kanafani as an attempt to obliterate the Palestinian narrative.’

Seen

Fanny Howe

‘Every cupboard is old, / every glass and cup / wiped clean.’

Two Tides

Eleanor Catton

‘The harbour at Mana was a converted mudflat, tightly elbowed and unlovely at any tide but high.’

In the Crossfire

Ha Jin

‘Meifen had never imagined that his life could be so fragile.’

American Subsidiary

William Pierce

‘He was typing up another proposal for robots that would replace human workers in an engine factory.’

Dragon Island | New Voices

Laura Fellowes

‘This is a wartime story. It is the spring of 1943 and Europe is burning; look down and see.’

A Vacation From Myself

John Beckman

‘My every next thought took a melancholy detour through drippy forests of humid emotions, often never to return’

Getting Lost

Heidi Julavits

‘We continued to ski. The bon vivantedness of our exchanges became increasingly coded with a double-edged worry. Would we have to spend the night in the woods?’