Issues
← Back to all issuesGranta 31: The General
Spring 1990
Nobody has ever got through to the ‘General’ – General Alfredo Stroessner – who, until he was deposed in 1989, was one of the world’s longest reigning dictators. Nobody, that is, until Isabel Hilton, following the suggestions of the General’s former mistresses, tracked him down in his hiding place in Brazil. Plus: Salman Rushdie, Richard Ford, Jonathan Raban, Gabriel García Márquez, Christopher Hitchens, and Margaret Atwood.
From this Issue
|Granta 31
The General
Isabel Hilton
‘The kitchen telephone would ring and it would be Gustavo Stroessner, the General's son, bellowing in that strange accent down a fuzzy line from Brazil, like an unruly fictional character nagging for a larger part in the plot.’
|Granta 31
The Future of Colombia
Gabriel García Márquez
‘With the hindsight of six years, it is clear that Colombia missed the opportunity to spare itself many of the horrors now afflicting it.’
|Granta 31
Salman Rushdie | Interview
Salman Rushdie & Blake Morrison
Blake Morrison interviews Salman Rushdie in 1990, one year after he was placed under fatwa.
|Granta 31
Crusoe
Salman Rushdie
‘Let me tell you, boyo, bach: I love this place, where green hills shelter me from fear.’
|Granta 31
Bucharest, 26 December 1989
Léonard Freed
Léonard Freed's photographs of Bucharest on 26 December 1989, in Granta 31: The General.
|Granta 31
North of North
Bill Bryson
‘I had also long harboured a curious, half-formed urge to see what life was like in such a remote and cheerless place.’
|Granta 31
Electric City
Richard Ford
‘No one, I think, thought Great Falls would burn.’
Fiction by Richard Ford.
|Granta 31
On a Boat to Tangier
Tahar Ben Jelloun
‘He inspected the chest where the snakes slept. There was the viper, quiet, in a deep sleep.’
