Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

The Comrades and I

Mona Abouissa

Mona Abouissa on her experiences with Egyptian communists, and the role they played in Egypt before 1952, when they were excised from official history.

Russia on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Liza Alexandrova-Zorina

‘The Russian people suffer from a victim complex: they believe that nothing depends on them, and by them nothing can be changed.’

Clown School

Nuar Alsadir

Political resistance, poetry, self-revelation all spring from that provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints.

Between Great Fires

William Atkins

‘This is the perennial anxiety – that at any moment, day or night, you might be snatched and shackled and tried and sent back.’

Out of the Cradle

John Barth

‘What had formerly been a sedative, a tranquilizing soporific, had morphed into a facilitator of reflection, contemplation, deliberation, even inspiration.’

Elif Batuman | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Elif Batuman

‘The power imbalance built into travel writing is just a heightened version of an imbalance that’s there in all writing.’

Tara Bergin | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Tara Bergin

‘If you laugh and tell me I am only speaking metaphorically, I will reply: what other way do you expect me to speak?’

The Back Way and the Way Back

Will Boast

Despite emerging from two decades of misrule under Yahya Jammeh, many Gambians still aspire to go ‘the back way’ into Europe.

Davos Woman

Trisha De Borchgrave

‘Did she process my gentle hand in the same way as the objectifying touch of the men before me? Did she know the difference?’

Same-same but different | Discoveries

Ka Bradley

This week’s Discoveries features translation in all its many articulations.

Writing While Worried

Fanny Britt

‘Just as it can spur me on, worry is adept at stifling and silencing.’

Écrire Avec Facultés Affaiblies

Fanny Britt

Comme il a grandi, j’ai pensé, puis j’ai passé la débarbouillette sous l’eau tiède du lavabo de la salle de bain.

Trollhättan

Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown on Swedish society and the Trollhättan school attack.

Microtravel: Home and Away

Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo

‘The place I thought I knew best had become unknown territory, by the perhaps not-so-simple process of taking a few steps.’