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Explore Essays and memoir

On Waking from a Dream

Stephen Grosz

‘As a psychoanalyst, I feel uncomfortable when I can’t remember a dream.’

Introducing Luisa Geisler

Elvira Navarro

‘To see everything large and to see it all for the first time is what a child’s eyes constantly do.’

Introducing Miguel Del Castillo

Andrés Neuman

‘And questions, more than heroes, are the material from which good stories are made.’

The Best Untranslated Writers

Laura Erber, Michel Laub & Ricardo Lísias

Three of Granta’s Best of Young Brazilian Novelists introduce Brazilian novelists whose work has not yet been widely translated.

Sugar in the Blood

Andrea Stuart

‘I understood that migration was a kind of death, in which one’s old self must be buried in order for a new self to be born.’

Sònia Hernández on Carola Saavedra

Carola Saavedra & Sònia Hernández

‘It’s quite uncommon to find dialogues that engulf you from the first word.’

Introducing Laura Erber

Dara Horn

‘Do yourself a favour: do not read Laura Erber’s ‘That Wind Blowing through the Plaza’ only once.’

Toby Litt on Ricardo Lísias

Ricardo Lísias & Toby Litt

‘In every word I saw a true untrue Gogol, and I felt joy.’

Dry Flowers from the Cerrado

Milton Hatoum

‘People say that Brasilia’s new national library opened before it had any books. Is that a metaphor for many politicians’ minds? Or for these times we’re in?’

Introducing J.P. Cuenca

Andrés Felipe Solano

‘From the future, Cuenca narrates Rio’s collapse and the personal fall of the main character. He does it with the elegant distance of a data collector but also with the terrifying certainty of one who knows there’s no going back.’

Javier Montes on Emilio Fraia

Javier Montes

‘Fraia sets himself the most difficult and respectable task a writer can face: unveiling the mystery without revealing the secret.’

House Style: Editing Brazil

Yuka Igarashi

‘We’re freaks . . . Why are we still talking about typos?’