Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Fiction

The Man at the River

Dave Eggers

‘All he wants is to be a man sitting on a riverbed.’

The Captain

Rattawut Lapcharoensap

‘I was with Dora. We were in love. Things were cheap and plentiful and the money from the insurance was going to last us forever.’

Crow Fair

Thomas McGuane

‘You’re in a different world when your own mother doesn’t recognize you, or thinks you’re the stranger who gave her a hickey.’

The Whale House

Sharon Millar

‘By morning the dreams are gone, flying through the tiny holes in the net in sudden starling movements.’

Nuestra Señora de la Asunción

Lina Wolff

‘No one here is normal except you, and you’re not even from Spain.’

From Dream to Dream

Yiyun Li

‘At what point had one’s life stopped belonging to one?’

Zephyrs

Jenni Fagan

‘Every step forward causes the road behind him to disappear.’

Don’t Fall in Love

Mohsin Hamid

‘She does not stare at you, but when your eyes meet, she does not look away.’

Tombouctou

Jamal Mahjoub

‘After about three days in Djenné the lizards begin to talk.’

Abingdon Square

André Aciman

‘Your problem is not that you misread signs; it’s that you see them everywhere.’

Persist

Zaina Arafat

‘I grew obsessed with the place, thinking that getting to see it, to experience it, would make the pain of that fall go away.’

The New Veterans

Karen Russell

‘Pain unwound itself under her palms‘

Blue Jay

Lillian Li

‘Like romantic love, you can’t ever replicate your first best-friendship.’

Boy, Snow, Bird

Helen Oyeyemi

‘I didn’t enclose a note, though there were a few things I’d have liked to say. Restraint is classier.’