Granta | The Home of New Writing

The Wrong Square

Interview: Henry Marsh

Henry Marsh

Where did you learn to tell a story? Until adolescence I read Grimms’ Fairy Tales,...

In Transit | New Voices

Dina Nayeri

‘Now it seemed that the rest of life was only a bright, eye-burning white expanse, like the sun-bleached concrete slabs just outside this building.’

Dina Nayeri | Interview

Dina Nayeri

‘I could shape a story before my mouth could shape the words.’

Henry Marsh | New Voices

Henry Marsh

Our New Voices series highlights the most exciting emerging talents on granta.com. The latest in...

The Conflicted Legacy of Meles Zenawi

Maaza Mengiste

‘Meles Zenawi’s legacy is as complicated as the life he chose to live, under a name (Meles) that he took from a fallen comrade during his days as a guerrilla fighter. ’

Graft vs. Host

Colin Grant

‘Oftentimes it took so long to ferry the injured that rather than send an ambulance the A&E doctors might as well have sent a hearse.’

Bush House

Mirza Waheed

‘I first stepped into Bush House on a dreary November day in 2001. It was a trepid walk.’

Grand Rounds

Chris Adrian

‘I used to fall asleep in those same seats during lectures just like this one.’

Dilation

Ben Lerner

‘My role in the slaughter doesn’t disqualify the beauty I find in all / forms of sheltered flame.’

Hardy Animal

M.J. Hyland

‘A few weeks after I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I made a pact with dying.’

The Cutting

Rose Tremain

‘I could not for too long delay my promise to Violet Bathurst to cut out her Cancer.’

Night

Alice Munro

‘I read books as usual, nobody knew there was a thing the matter with me.’

Fiction by Alice Munro.

The Lady and the Skull

Angela Carter

‘I believed I had defined the problem. / With which the picked skull had presented me.’

My Heart

Semezdin Mehmedinović

‘Today, it seems, was the day I was meant to die.’ Translated from the Bosnian by Celia Hawkesworth.

Ordinary Light

Brad Feuerhelm & A.L. Kennedy

‘Here were humanity’s wilder beauties and our horrors, the physical record of hatreds, lusts and quiet obsessions.’ A.L. Kennedy introduces Brad Feuerhelm’s photographic collection.

Nature Study: Spots

Kay Ryan

‘Reminding us / again that live things / can be flat.’

The Perfect Code

Terrence Holt

‘At the centre of all this lies the patient, the only one in the room who isn’t shouting.’

The Former Mayor’s Ancient Daughter

Rachel Shihor

‘With us in the nursing home lives the ancient daughter of the former mayor’

The Third Dumpster

Gish Jen

‘It was about doing what sons were bound to do, which was not to pussyfoot around.’

Blueberries

James Lasdun

‘I thought I’d do it while I still could.’

People Don’t Get Depressed in Nigeria

Ike Anya

‘He has come to us against the wishes of his family and the village and I feel that I owe him something.’

Philanthropy

Suzanne Rivecca

‘They were all perpetually cowed by their own brutality, quivering and defeated by the measures they were forced to enact.’

Randy and Mummy at the Drawbridge

Linda H. Davis

‘Long after I had ceased feeling guilty about my father’s death, I still felt defined by it.’

The Father of Heliopolis

Pauls Toutonghi

‘Political institutions can be as fragile as the human bodies that run them.’

German Quasi-Story of Ulrika Thöus

Salvador Espriu

‘For hidden though they may be – and it is incontrovertible that they are – sooner or later the testicles will have to appear.’

Blind Spot

Teju Cole

‘I heard faint noises, the occasional car going down another street, a voice lightly thrown from its unseen body, the hum of distant machines, and the sound of my own breathing as I put one foot in.’

Home

Michael Salu

‘Home’ by Edmund Clark from Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out and Granta 119: Britain...

Claire Vaye Watkins | Podcast

Claire Vaye Watkins & Ted Hodgkinson

‘These are stories that capture sudden, unexpected intimacies and unearth alternate family mythologies in seemingly innocuous objects.’

Florence Boyd | Interview

Florence Boyd & Ted Hodgkinson

‘There is a dichotomy of darkness and beauty within things that we can’t confront head on.’

Olympic Drift: making way for the Games

Laura Oldfield Ford

‘Walking around the perimeter of the Olympic site has become an act of remembrance.’

Bread of Beirut

Annia Ciezadlo

‘Whenever there’s the threat of violence, people rush to the bakery for bread, of course, but also, I suspect, for reassurance.’

Remembering Anthony Shadid

Michael Robinson-Chavez

‘It was Anthony Shadid at his best, consumed by the stories of Iraq in the wake of the US led invasion and writing the most beautiful and intimate account of what followed.’

Anthony Shadid | Interview

Anthony Shadid & Ted Hodgkinson

‘It’s very difficult to say what kind of Iraq is going to emerge from this trauma. I think we have to wait a generation.’

Brazilian Diary

Cynan Jones

‘It’s quite a phone call to get: ‘Will you go to Brazil for us?’’

The Last Hunters

David Morris & Candy Whittome

Images from a series of photographs that focuses on the lives of the crab fishermen of Cromer, Norfolk.