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← Back to all issuesGranta 147: 40th-Birthday Special
Spring 2019
It’s 1979. The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan, China introduces its one-child policy, Margaret Thatcher is elected as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and an old Cambridge student magazine is relaunched. This special edition marks Granta’s 40th birthday by bringing together some of its best writing from the past forty years.
Cover image © Neville Brody, 2019
From this Issue
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The Fall of Saigon
James Fenton
‘I wanted to see a communist victory, which I presumed to be inevitable. I wanted to see the fall of a city.’
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Tadpoles
Primo Levi
‘It was a harsh and brutal puberty: the tiny creatures began to fret, as if an inner sense had forewarned them of the torment in store’
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The Imam and the Indian
Amitav Ghosh
‘We were both travelling, he and I: we were travelling in the West. The only difference was that I had actually been there, in person.’
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His Roth
Philip Roth
‘I naively believed as a child that I would always have a father present, and the truth seems to be that I always will.’
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Glitches
John Gregory Dunne
‘I prefer not to speculate about what might have happened if I had not taken the ECG.’
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The Snow in Ghana
Ryszard Kapuściński
‘We always carry it to foreign countries, all over the world, our pride and our powerlessness.’ Translated from the Polish by William Brand.
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The Little Winter
Joy Williams
‘She remembered being happy off and on that day, and then looking at things and finding it all unkind.’
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At Yankee Stadium
Don DeLillo
‘From a series of linked couples they become one continuous wave, larger all the time.’
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The Zoo in Basel
John Berger
‘To create is to let take over something which did not exist before and is therefore new.’
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Agnes of Iowa
Lorrie Moore
‘Through college she had been a feminist – more or less. She shaved her legs, but just not often enough, she liked to say.’
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Editing Vidia
Diana Athill
‘I thought so highly of Vidia’s writing and felt his presence on our list to be so important that I simply could not allow myself not to like him.’
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Shrinks
Edmund White
‘Self-doubt, which is a cousin to self-hatred, became my constant companion.’
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The View from this End
Alexandra Fuller
‘It lay like a sodden comma, curled up against its mother, and no one realised it was dead.’
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The Dreadful Mucamas
Lydia Davis
‘We do not believe they are sincerely trying to please us.’
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All I Know About Gertrude Stein
Jeanette Winterson
‘The more I love you, the more I feel alone.’
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Always the Same Snow and Always the Same Uncle
Herta Müller
‘Who knows: what I write I must eat, what I don’t write – eats me.’
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Menudo
Raymond Carver
‘Vicky says I’m crazy. She said worse things too last night. But who could blame her?’
