Granta | The Home of New Writing

Eva and Diego

Agamemnon’s Truth

Javier Cercas

‘My name is Javier Cercas, just like you.’

A Woman Wronged

Jeremy Seabrook

‘The dead do not leave us alone.’

Hunter’s Moon

Thomas Lynch

‘She had left him for a woman.’

Now A Major Motion Picture

Todd McEwen

‘None of these high-falutin pansy-ass would-be 'technologies' are going to save literature.’

Best of Young American Novelists 2: Introduction

Ian Jack

Ian Jack introduces Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists 2.

The King is Always Above the People

Daniel Alarcón

‘It was the year I left my parents, a few useless friends, and a girl who liked to tell everyone we were married, and moved two hundred kilometres downstream to the capital.’

Parakeets

Kevin Brockmeier

‘The birds studied the mute as though he were a puzzle.’

The Complaint

Judy Budnitz

‘The first few apartments Claude inspects have the air of people who haven't budged in years.’

That First Time

Christopher Coake

‘Everything, even the ground under his feet, felt impermanent.’

Procreate, Generate

Anthony Doerr

‘Nothingness is the rule. Life is the exception.’

Room After Room

Jonathan Safran Foer

‘Her heart is kept in a room with a very expensive security system.’

Where East Meets West

Nell Freudenberger

‘How can we presume to know what other people's experiences are like?’

Exile

Olga Grushin

‘For one instant, while all this seemed possible, he listened to the violent unfolding of his heart.’

Passover in New Orleans

Dara Horn

‘The moon was bright and round, as it always is on Passover, like a coin resting on the moist black velvet of the spring night sky.’

Hard Core

Gabe Hudson

‘My buddy Meat’s the one who showed me the true joy of handling the M203.’

Gabe Hudson in Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists 2.

Dance Cadaverous

Uzodinma Iweala

‘It just seemed like the right thing to want, the right thing to do.’

My Painter

Nicole Krauss

‘My painter caught me in a moment that is somehow rare and yet not uncharacteristic.’

Valets

Rattawut Lapcharoensap

‘It’s a slow night again. The other valets are out back playing pétanque with the kitchen staff.’

House Fire

Yiyun Li

‘The six friends declared war against love outside marriage.’

O Tannenbaum

Maile Meloy

‘He would never put his wife and child in danger again.’

Buffalo Soldiers

ZZ Packer

‘No bullet, no recoil, no shot.’

The Answer

Jess Row

‘It's a Thursday afternoon in late August.’

The Barn at The End of Our Term

Karen Russell

‘Eleven of the stabled horses are, as far as Rutherford can ascertain, former presidents of the United States of America.’

Mother And Son

Akhil Sharma

‘I also tried holding my breath for a moment longer than necessary and asking God to give the unused breaths to Birju.’

From The Diaries of Lenny Abramov

Gary Shteyngart

‘Today, I’ve made a major decision: I am never going to die.’

In The Tunnel

John Wray

‘It was a question of not thinking about what you were doing.’

War Zones: Introduction

Ian Jack

‘Feelings of hate and despair dwindle as they pass down the generations.’

The Limeroom

John Burnside

‘I was discovering this deep reserve of patience I never knew I had, and I was surprised at how rich it was.’

Victory in Lebanon

Wendell Steavenson

‘We are from God and we return to God.’

The Courthouse

Tahmima Anam

‘If I had known it would put a continent between me and my children I would have killed that map-maker myself.’

Operation Gomorrah

Marione Ingram

‘We hadn't progressed very far when we began to see bodies.’

Tokyo Year Zero

David Peace

‘The song, the voice, and the heat; men on their knees, heads in hands, sobbing and now howling.’

The Bastard of Istanbul

Elif Shafak

‘She squinted, sighed a conflicted sigh and then unleashed another profanity, only this time against the rain.’

Trident

James Buchan

‘As many as thirty-five states in the world are thought to have the capacity (if not the wish) to build a nuclear weapon.’

Congo

Guy Tillim

‘Visibility is everything.’

The Little Museum of Memory

Mark Slouka

‘Maybe they're worried that their absence will be noticed. Maybe they just want to come home.’