Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Mohsin Hamid | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Mohsin Hamid

‘I have come to believe that we are all migrants, that the experience of migration unites all human beings.’

Water, Water, Everywhere

Darrell Hartman

Darrell Hartman on water: from diving to climate change, hurricanes Irma and Harvey to the advent of ‘Blue Mind’.

Sympathy | State of Mind

Rachel Hewitt

‘Before motherhood, I had not thought much about sympathy.’

Lindsey Hilsum | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Lindsey Hilsum

‘We need a new genre of travel writing, gleaned from the stories refugees and migrants.’

The File: Lost Then Found

A.M. Homes

‘Even for those of us who feel we have integrated our history, there can be fragments, like shrapnel, that push to the surface without warning.’

A Mingling | State of Mind

Siri Hustvedt

‘My empathy may become a vehicle of insight for me and therefore help me to help you or it may debilitate me altogether, make me so sad I am no good to you whatsoever.’

All That Was Familiar

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

The story of two women fleeing Boko Haram in north-east Nigeria.

Anosh Irani | Notes on Craft

Anosh Irani

‘The interiority that we keep speaking of in fiction is built on pain’

Pico Iyer | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Pico Iyer

‘The writer on place has to go further inward, into the realm of silence and nuance and personal enquiry.’

Out of the Cell

Pico Iyer

‘I was inside a silence that was not an absence of noise so much as the living presence of everything I habitually walked – or sleep-walked – past.’

Ian Jack | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Ian Jack

‘Travel writing of most kinds, not just the humorous, has the history of colonialism perched on its shoulder.’

Monster | State of Mind

Margo Jefferson

‘Today’s a day for you to feel blocked and impeded; a coward in work and love; resenting duty; suspecting pleasure.’