Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Dogfight Over Karachi

Khademul Islam

‘I slowly went down the stairs, feeling my being unspooling.’

Patrick French | First Sentence

Patrick French

‘In Edwardian days, if you were growing up in England (though Maurice was from Ireland) your life was regimented.’

The Rainy Season

Lindsey Hilsum

‘In Rwanda today so much is unspoken or only whispered.’

Mess

Romesh Gunesekera

‘You have to go on the offensive until you smell victory. Then you have the aphrodisiac and can go full tilt.’

1979

Aminatta Forna

‘What happened in 1979 has happened many times before and many times since, in places where people have set themselves free and believed with all their hearts that the freedom they had fought for was real and lasting, only to be recaptured.’

Selvy After the War

Frances Harrison

‘She exudes happiness. Somewhere along the line she understood that this was the best way to defeat the men who tortured her.’

A Dynasty of Album Cover Art

Lemi Ghariokwu

‘The music is as powerful as it gets and beneath his knife-edge, cutting sarcasm, Fela’s voice rages.’

The Third Pole

Gavin Francis

‘I came to the Himalayas not because of a dream of mountains or of animals, but because of a map.’

The Two Gardens

Lorna Gibb

‘There are two gardens in my memory. The first was hidden behind the rows of shabby council houses where I grew up.’

I Love This Dirty Town

Anjum Hasan

‘What is hard to miss and impossible not to grieve over is how present-day Shillong has been overwhelmed by the material aspirations of its people.’

Jenni Fagan | My Writing Playlist

Jenni Fagan

Best of Young British Novelist Jenni Fagan selects five songs that she loves to write to.

Introduction: Best of Young British Novelists 4

John Freeman

‘We live in unreaderly times, but our belief is that these novelists will be exceptions to the general rule of irrelevance faced by writers today.’

Xiaolu Guo | My Writing Playlist

Xiaolu Guo

‘The challenge of flowing in one continuous outpouring of language in a novel is my killer.’