Explore Essays and memoir
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The Last Modernist
Chris Petit
‘If there were any sense of cultural justice in this country, the Westway – that chunk of concrete modernism – would be renamed after J.G. Ballard.’
Lost and Found
Je Banach
‘And yet, despite the overwhelming evidence of Lamb’s influence on contemporary writing, the nineteenth-century superstar has been largely ignored and mostly forgotten.’
A letter from Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro
The letter that accompanied Ishiguro’s first submission to Granta.
Subject+Object
Jan Morris
‘The sea runs through our house – not literally, of course, but metaphorically, or perhaps emotionally.’
Among the Pipemen
Andrew Martin
‘It was as though, after a period of wariness, my pipe had warmed to me.’
Keeping it in the family
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
‘He had abandoned me, after all, when I was nine months old, mostly so that he could devote his time, energy and money to the cause of workers’ revolution.’
Hal Crowther | Portrait of My Father
Hal Crowther
‘Only rarely and providentially do the vices of the fathers fail to be visited on the sons.’
Christopher Sorrentino | Portrait of My Father
Christopher Sorrentino
‘Those who strongly resemble one parent will recall the unsettling feeling of gazing into old photos and seeing, in relation to themselves, not the remote similarity of the grown-up sitting across the dinner table, but an exact likeness.’
Keeping it in the family
Claire Vaye Watkins
‘My father first came to Death Valley because Charles Manson told him to.’
Alexander Chee | Portrait of My Father
Alexander Chee
‘He left for the US while his father was away on business so he couldn’t stop him.’
