Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Going Home

Raja Shehadeh

Read an excerpt from Raja Shehadeh’s Going Home, a reflection on ageing, failure, the occupation, and the changing face of Ramallah.

Night on Fire

Darcey Steinke

‘I know what’s going to happen and I know that it’s going to be bizarre.’

Surrender

Joanna Pocock

‘How could having sex with the Earth ever be consensual?’

Distributed Denial of Service

Merritt Tierce

‘Once you learn to seal the shell, to make it watertight, you can let anything roil around in there.’

Binyavanga Wainaina

Sigrid Rausing

Granta’s editor Sigrid Rausing remembers Binyavanga Wainaina.

How I Write My Books

Anne Serre

Anne Serre on how she writes. Translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson.

Pajtim Statovci | Notes on Craft

Pajtim Statovci

‘My childhood was pierced not only by the violence in Kosovo but also by the violence my immigrant family was confronted with in Finland.’

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

Editor Sigrid Rausing introduces Granta 147: 40th-Birthday Special.

His Roth

Philip Roth

‘I naively believed as a child that I would always have a father present, and the truth seems to be that I always will.’

Self-Consciousness

Edward W. Said

‘It was through my mother that I grew more aware of my body as incredibly fraught and problematic.’

The Power of a Name

Rebecca Tamás

‘When English is the dominant everything, you can’t help wanting to fight for the little speck of the rest of your self.’

Fires

James Pogue

‘In 2018 in northern California, 21,000 homes burned.’

Dinah

Barbara Smith

Barbara Smith remembers her friend and cousin, Diana Athill.

The Nine Circles

Margo Rejmer

‘The body wants to escape suffering at all costs. The body wants to live.’