Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

The Foreign Correspondent

Pallavi Aiyar

‘The absence of Indian foreign correspondents was, and is, unexceptional.’

Best Book of 2008: The Alphabet

Rae Armantrout

Rae Armantrout on why Ron Silliman's The Alphabet is the best book of 2008.

Lessons

Diana Athill

‘My two valuable lessons are: avoid romanticism and abhor possessiveness.’

Best Story of 1965: ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge’

Aimee Bender

Aimee Bender on why Flannery O’Connor's ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge’ is the best story of 1965.

Fatima Bhutto | My Other Thing

Fatima Bhutto

‘If you happen to be friends with one of the world’s most fearsome food critics, don’t cook for him.’

Fatima Bhutto on the Refugee Crisis

Fatima Bhutto

‘In a connected world, how can anyone close their doors?’

First Sentence: Molly Brodak

Molly Brodak

‘A name is a single small token of selfhood issued at birth, upon which all the rest of one’s person must be built.’

Bandit

Molly Brodak

‘There are fragments of a criminal alongside fragments of a dad, and nothing overlaps, nothing eclipses the other, they’re just there, next to each other. No narrative fits.’

After Maidan

Oliver Bullough

‘A woman asked the steward behind the registration desk if our flight to Moscow was domestic or international. “We are still working on that,” the man answered.’

Best Book of 2006: The Re-Emergence of Global Finance

Oliver Bullough

Oliver Bullough on why Gary Burn's The Re-Emergence of Global Finance is the best book of 2006.

Saving Mesopotamia

Alexandra Lucas Coelho

‘What they are excavating is the birth of a civilisation.’

Night Watch

Tim Dee

‘A nightjar is a dusty carpet whose pattern has absorbed into it every tread.’

Cairo: September 2014

Wiam El-Tamami

‘Over the past few months, the government has been ad-libbing the time.’

War in Donbas

Julian Evans

Six days on the front lines of Ukraine’s ongoing battle with pro-Russian separatists