Granta | The Home of New Writing

The Grandson of Jesus Christ

Chloe Aridjis | Portrait of My Father

Chloe Aridjis

‘My father has always said that he was born twice.’

Benjamin Anastas | Portrait of My Father

Benjamin Anastas

‘For years when I was growing up, I passed underneath this double-nude every time I climbed up or down the stairs in my father’s house.’

Lê Thi Diem Thúy | Portrait of My Father

Lê Thi Diem Thúy

‘He believes there is a future for us somewhere. When he smiles like that, who can tell him otherwise?’

Maud Newton | Portrait of My Father

Maud Newton

‘Exactly how long the prostitute, unbeknownst to my father, stayed at our house and slept in my bed is hard to gauge.’

Rabih Alameddine | Portrait of My Father

Rabih Alameddine

‘I come from a family that hangs pictures of family on its walls.’

Gary Shteyngart | Portrait of My Father

Gary Shteyngart

‘I am fourteen years old and this is the only time I have ever successfully driven a car in my entire life.’

Why Updike Matters

Joseph O’Neill

‘The death of John Updike is an instant literary disaster.’

The Inauguration

Daniel Alarcón

‘With few exceptions, presidents do not comment on or even recognize an individual loss like this one; they operate on another scale, and there is no room within their discourse for something so small.’

Jim Shepard | Portrait of My Father

Jim Shepard

‘His solution was to do everything that was humanly possible for those he loved, without any sense that he was owed anything in return.’

Rewriting the Rules of the Game

Ian Leslie

Ian Leslie on Barack Obama's election in 2008 and forthcoming administration.

Lost in Translation

Daniel Alarcón

‘It’s about the music of it. “It’s Hollywood,” Mario said, and assured me the same is true of political speech-making.’

A Literature for Politics: Introduction

Bill Buford

‘‘A Literature for Politics' is dedicated to a different set of possibilities - the possibilities of political engagement.’

Coda

Simon Gray

Pleasantries and Other Pleasures It’s a heavenly day. Warm, with the mildest of breezes, the...

The Bridge

Daniel Alarcón

‘There was no question we were underwater.’

Saving the World

Tahmima Anam

‘Today, my brothers, Mohammed and Rubel, are going to foreign.’

The Destiny of Nathalie X

William Boyd

’I once heard a theory about this town, this place where we work and wrangle, where we swindle and swive‘.

Brief Encounters

Richard Murphy

‘The year was 1944. The Germans had started to rain their first flying bombs on England’.

Call If You Need Me

Raymond Carver

‘She watched me as I wrote out a cheque for the three months’ rent. Later, back at the motel, in bed, she lay with her hand on her forehead and said, “I envy your wife.”’

Fiction by Raymond Carver.

Mr Bones

Paul Auster

‘Mr Bones knew that Willy wasn't long for this world’.

The Final Days of Dr Doe

Lynda Schuster

‘In the summer of 1990, tens of thousands of Liberians died in a civil war of remarkable brutality. Many more starved to death'.

Do I Owe You Something?

Michael Mewshaw

‘In the fall of 1971, Rome enjoyed an unbroken skein of bright crisp mornings and balmy afternoons that stretched on into November’.

The Separated

Tim Lott

‘It is a short January day, unseasonably warm. The afternoon is getting dark and it isn't yet four o'clock’.

Habibi

Ruth Gershon

Can you still find this day, Habibi, among your possessions?’.

This is Centerville

James Buchan

‘In the imagination of strangers there is a small town in America which represents not just itself but the whole country‘.

September, 1973

Ariel Dorfman

‘It's that simple: there is a day in my past, a day many years ago in Santiago de Chile, when I should have died and did not.’

Captain Mbaye Diagne

Mark Doyle

‘The Rwandan town of Nyamata is thirty kilometres south of Kigali, the capital'.

At The Villa Moro

Paul Theroux

‘This is my only story. Now that I am sixty I can tell it’.

Destiny

Tim Parks

‘Destiny: there are those who still believe this word has meaning’.

Man Walks Into A Bar

James Kelman

‘I had been living abroad for twelve years and I was gaun hame, maybe forever, maybe a month.‘

Emma

Deborah Scroggins

‘When I think of Nasir, I remember the sun. Nothing in that place escaped it.’

The War of The Words

Alexander Stille

‘The world in which he grew up, a pastoral nomadic life that developed over centuries in isolation, is disappearing’.

The Nuba

Jack Picone & John Ryle

‘They show people denied access to markets that they enjoyed before the war, people impoverished by the fight to preserve their culture and to assert control of their territory.’