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← Back to all issuesGranta 28: Birthday Special
Autumn 1989
A mad editorial tea-party celebrating Granta’s first ten years: John Simpson, Salman Rushdie, Ian Jack, Ryszard Kapuściński, Nadine Gordimer, Jeanette Winterson, Richard Rayner, George Steiner, Walter Abish, William Boyd, Russell Hoban, Eugene Richards, Joy Williams, Leonard Michaels, Jay McInerney, John Updike, Peregrine Hodson, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Colin Thubron.
From this Issue
|Granta 28
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.
|Granta 28
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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Tiananmen Square
John Simpson
‘I had seen people die in front of me before. But I had never seen three people die, one after the other, in this way.’
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6 March 1989
Salman Rushdie
‘Damn, brother. You saw what they did to my face? / Poked out my eyes. Knocked teeth out of place’.
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The Ultimate Safari
Nadine Gordimer
‘We were in the war, too, but we were children, we were like our grandmother and grandfather, we didn’t have guns.’
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The Structure of Things Here
David Goldblatt
‘In our structures we South Africans tend to declare ourselves quite nakedly, sometimes eloquently, and rarely with dissimulation.’
|Granta 28
A Discourse on the Elephant
Richard Rayner
‘This is not the story of my life, at least not the story of all of it, but it is the story of my father.’
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Noël, Noël
George Steiner
‘Come Christmas, sounds mix and multiply. And are shot through with smells.’
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Furniture of Desire
Walter Abish
‘It took him only a moment to eliminate all doubt. The opportunity was ripe.’
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Colin Maillard
Guy Davenport
‘All people with socks and sneakers were rich, didn’t they know?’
|Granta 28
Transfigured Night
William Boyd
‘My sisters, I am sure, were immune to suicide’s powerful contagion.’
|Granta 28
The Man with the Dagger
Russell Hoban
‘I thought the story would be the most likely place to look for Dahlmann, so I went there.’
|Granta 28
Pilgrims in Ireland
Markéta Luskačová
‘The bareness of this land was beyond anything I had imagined, but in the faces of these men, in their postures, their prayers, there was something that felt very familiar to me.’
|Granta 28
Journal
Leonard Michaels
‘Of course I wouldn’t. It would be politically incorrect, as is anything really personal.’
|Granta 28
Jimmy
Jay McInerney
‘Suddenly Jared wondered if he could pick Jimmy out of a police line-up.’
|Granta 28
The Lens Factory
John Updike
‘It made him feel lopsided, this sense of being plucked at by nervousness and dread.’
|Granta 28
Thursday Night in Tokyo
Peregrine Hodson
‘The spotlight grew brighter, there was a movement behind the curtain, and a dwarf with a painted clown’s face stepped into the circle of light.’
|Granta 28
Mouth
Mario Vargas Llosa
‘I lost my left ear from a bite. . .Through the thin slit that remains I can hear the sounds of the world.’
|Granta 28
Mistakes
Colin Thubron
‘In twenty or thirty years’ time, perhaps, a monument will be raised to the martyrs of Tiananmen Square, innocent harbingers of a more liberal age.’
