Explore Essays and memoir
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Best Book of 2005: Zadie Smith’s On Beauty
Caoilinn Hughes
Caoilinn Hughes on why Zadie Smith’s On Beauty is the best book of 2005
Best Book of 2019: A Month in Siena
Emmanuel Iduma
‘In art he finds the language with which to exchange mourning for some measure of equanimity.’
Emmanuel Iduma’s best book of 2019.
Best of Young American Novelists 2: Introduction
Ian Jack
Ian Jack introduces Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists 2.
Best of Young British Novelists 2003: Introduction
Ian Jack
‘What had been an exercise to publicize the literary novel, at a time when there were few spotlights on this particular branch of culture, might now have a new role as an independent consumer's guide to novelists who deserved to be read in an era where 'a thrilling debut by a young writer of enormous talent' is the standard blurb, and where there are now so many spotlights directed by marketing money and the size of the writer's advance.’
Betrayal
Adam Foulds
‘The thrill of this film – and it is thrilling – is seeing that understood and played out by actors of incredible skill.’
Between Them
Richard Ford
‘It was my child’s outlook to think most things were right. And yet if life’s eternal drama is of events seeking a more perfect state, their life and mine was not that.’
Blue Hills and Chalk Bones
Sinéad Gleeson
‘One day, something changes; a corporeal blip. For me, it happened in the months after turning thirteen: the synovial fluid in my left hip began to evaporate like rain.’
Bogotá, Colombia
Roger Garfitt
‘Driving along la Séptima, the main road into the centre of Bogotá, we find ourselves blocked by a high-speed convoy.’
Bone Litter
Marian Botsford Fraser
‘There is a tiny skull on a pillow of bright green moss, and arm and leg bones neatly crossed, as if they had just been gently placed there in mourning.’
