Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Dr J

Kalpana Narayanan

‘My father has his own language for everything. When I finished my MFA, I was a NINJA: No Income, No Job, No Assets.’

Lagos Must Prosper

Alexis Okeowo

21 million people, $91 billion GDP, an ambitious governor whose term is up: Alexis Okeowo on the megacity of Lagos

The Legacy

Fred Pearce

‘It created not just a climate of fear, but also a landscape of secrets.’

Possession

Bella Pollen

‘The brain is a bureaucratic organ with an almost neurotic determination to balance its books. To account to the department of logic for terror, it calls on the office of imagination to conjure up a worthy vision.’

The Fixer

Snigdha Poonam

‘In Indian media and advertising, young people are mainly being projected as vessels of breathless aspiration.’

A Woman’s Worth

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan on the evolution of feminist judgments in India.

Introduction: Possession

Sigrid Rausing

‘Possession takes many forms, and at the heart of it is death and dereliction, invasion and submission.’

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

‘The pieces in this issue of Granta are all concerned, in one way or another, with the difference between the world as we see it and the world as it actually is, beyond our faulty memories and tired understanding.’

Introduction: What Have We Done

Sigrid Rausing

‘There is an apocalyptic feeling in the air. I write the day after the news that the IS have blown up parts of the ancient site of Palmyra.’

To Recall, To Praise

Spencer Reece

‘What would follow for five years was one of my last relationships forged through letters.’

Famished Eels

Mary Rokonadravu

‘After one hundred years, this is what I have: a daguerreotype of her in bridal finery; a few stories told and retold in plantations, kitchens, hospitals, airport lounges.’

Refugees and Europe: The Swedish Exception

Göran Rosenberg

‘What would it take to turn the downward spiral of anti-refugee policies around?’

Pause

Mary Ruefle

‘Nothing can prepare you for this.’ Mary Ruefle on menopause.

Love Jihad

Aman Sethi

‘He said Love Jihad, or the practice of Muslims seducing Hindu girls with the aim of converting them to Islam, was an existential threat to India.’