Photograph by thehayfestival
Nadifa Mohamed speaks with Ted Hodgkinson about her first novel, Black Mamba Boy.
Photograph by thehayfestival
‘I alone know a running stream
that is recovery partly and dim sweat
of a day-fever’
A poem by Rowan Evans.
‘Humour is a thread we hang onto. It punctures through the fog of guilt.’
Momtaza Mehri in conversation with Warsan Shire.
‘Something shifted in me that night. A small voice in my head said, maybe you can make a way for yourself as a poet here, too.’
Mary Jean Chan in conversation with Andrew McMillan.
‘There was to be an exhibition. There were lots of pictures like his, apparently – of waiters, pastry cooks, valets, bellboys.’
An essay by Jason Allen-Paisant from Granta 159: What Do You See?
‘I have started to see that nothing is itself’
A poem by Jason Allen-Paisant from Granta 154: I’ve Been Away for a While.
Nadifa Mohamed was born in Somalia and moved to Britain in 1986. Her first novel, Black Mamba Boy, published in 2010, was longlisted for the Orange Prize; shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Dylan Thomas Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the PEN/Open Book Award; and won the Betty Trask Award. Her most recent novel is The Orchard of Lost Souls. She is one of Granta’s 2013 Best of Young British Novelists.
More about the author →Ted Hodgkinson is the previous online editor at Granta. He was a judge for the 2012 Costa Book Awards’ poetry prize, announced earlier this year. He managed the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Tuscany, the affiliated Gregor Von Rezzori Literary Prize and still serves as an advisor. His stories have appeared in Notes from the Underground and The Mays and his criticism in the Times Literary Supplement. He has an MA in English from Oxford and an MFA from Columbia.
More about the author →‘It was in one of those listless summers after graduation that I found myself in the small Japanese town of Sasayama.’
A short film featuring Nadifa Mohamed, one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists.
‘Silence takes the place of all these words and her loneliness remains as dense and close as a shadow.’
‘I became English by osmosis; a new sense of humour, altered manners, an alternative history filtering through my old skin.’
‘On this fine, hazy day, the eyes are hazel, the tongue long and spackled with a white coating.’
Fiction by Fer Boyd, winner of The Space Crone Prize.
‘How do we imagine the past of those we love?’
Arthur Asseraf on family and fractured memories.
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