Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Soon Comes Night

Ekow Eshun

‘I’d become so used to hiding away inside myself I couldn’t respond with any spontaneity. I was stuck in the shallows of my emotions.’

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

‘What’s in a state of mind? How do we describe emotions, or the complex relationship between individuals and the state?’

Notes on a Suicide

Rana Dasgupta

‘The problem was that, for the most part, it did not matter how widely broadcast your discontent was: no one cared.’

Rana Dasgupta on digital celebrity and a suicide in the banlieues of Paris.

One Picture, A Thousand Words

Charles Glass & Don McCullin

‘I think they are not on the right path. It’s wrong. What they are doing is wrong.’

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.’

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.’

Salvage

Reynaldo Rivera & Chris Kraus

‘Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Reynaldo photographed his world, a world that no longer exists in LA.’ Photographs by Reynaldo Rivera, introduced by Chris Kraus.

The Recall of Herman Harcourt

Colin Grant

‘I had the queer feeling of looking into a mirror of the projected future, of perhaps seeing how easily his fall could be a rehearsal for my own.’

Cyprus United

Joe Dunthorne

‘The idea that football might provide an opportunity to overcome our dumber instincts seemed ridiculous now: football was a chance to set our idiocy free.’

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.’

Coming Home to the Counter-Revolution

Jack Shenker

‘My Cairo is an inverted city, one that wears its innards above the skin.’

Mistaken | State of Mind

Mary Ruefle

‘I take it, if only as a substitute for my unknown name’

Imagined Memories

Francesca Todde & Nuar Alsadir

‘The creation of a screen memory is an encoding process: the screen retains all that is important from the past, but in encrypted form.’ Nuar Alsadir introduces the photographs of Francesca Todde.

Gay and Depressed | State of Mind

Andrew Solomon

‘It would be a bit more tolerable if we lived in a society that didn’t blame depression on its victims.’