Issues
← Back to all issuesGranta 48: Africa
Autumn 1994
Twelve writers describe the profound changes this continent is undergoing. With Lynda Schuster in Liberia as Doe falls, Gilles Peress in Rwanda after the massacres, Paul Theroux at a leper colony in Malawi, Sousa Jamba in Angola, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Abraham Verghese in Ethiopia, William Finnegan in South Africa, and William Boyd’s enchanting novella of an African filmmaker made good.
From this Issue
|Granta 48
The Destiny of Nathalie X
William Boyd
’I once heard a theory about this town, this place where we work and wrangle, where we swindle and swive‘.
|Granta 48
The Final Days of Dr Doe
Lynda Schuster
‘In the summer of 1990, tens of thousands of Liberians died in a civil war of remarkable brutality. Many more starved to death'.
|Granta 48
Captain Mbaye Diagne
Mark Doyle
‘The Rwandan town of Nyamata is thirty kilometres south of Kigali, the capital'.
|Granta 48
The Lepers of Moyo
Paul Theroux
‘Boarding the train in the African darkness just before dawn was like climbing into the body of a huge, dusty monster'.
|Granta 48
Startled In The Dark
Ryszard Kapuscinski
‘Morning and dusk are by far the best times of day in Africa. The sun is scorching, but these times allow you to live.'
|Granta 48
Sandpiper
Ahdaf Soueif
‘Outside, there is a path. A path of beaten white stone bordered by a white wall–low, but not low enough for me to see over it from here'.
|Granta 48
A Child’s Book of Death and Dying
Abraham Verghese
‘A fine morning mist had rolled down over Addis Ababa from the Entoto mountains, leaving a sheen on the lawn between the apartment buildings'.
|Granta 48
The Silent Majority of Cape Town
William Finnegan
‘Next to Mandela sat Allan Boesak, the ANC candidate for premier of the Western Cape province. Great is thy faithfulness, indeed, I thought.’
