Issues
← Back to all issuesFrom this Issue
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Benjamin Pell Versus the Rest of the World
Tim Adams
‘You hear Benjamin Pell long before you see him.’
Fiction|Granta 87
Fiction|Granta 87
Northanger Abbey
Martin Amis
Jane Austen’s novel ‘Northanger Abbey’ was published posthumously in 1818. Martin Amis adapted it for Miramax Pictures in 2001. The film has yet to be made. This is how it begins.
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Fiction|Granta 87
Fiction|Granta 87
Early One Morning
Helen Simpson
‘He's the only person in the world who listens to me and does what I tell him (thought Zoe).’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87
Perchance to Pick One’s Nose
Jan Morris
‘Shame and regret are certainly not the same things: je ne regrette rien, like charity, can cover a multitude of sins.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Never Againism
Philip Gourevitch
‘Anniversaries can have an importance—a power over us—that we do not control.’
Fiction|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Fiction|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
A New World
V. S. Pritchett
‘What was this new world? It was their love for each other.’
Fiction|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Fiction|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The View from Yves Hill
William Boyd
‘What is the point of rising early? I congratulate myself if I'm out of bed before midday.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Aspirers
Pankaj Mishra
‘Bollywood is part of what our culture has become. We are lying to ourselves all the time.’
Fiction|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Osama’s War
Wendell Steavenson
‘He, of course, had nothing to be frightened of; if he died as a mujahid he was going to a paradise heaven.’
Fiction|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Fiction|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Ecstasy
J. Robert Lennon
‘She lay there, her hand on her jeans in the place where she’d seen John’s head coming out of his mother.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The Enduring General
Isabel Hilton
‘Dictators tend to fret about history.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87
The Tailor of Gujarat
Amit Chaudhuri
‘He was desperate for the photograph to cease to exist: as if the man in the photo and he are competing for the same oxygen.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
When I Last Saw Him
Blake Morrison
‘When young, we were impatient with our parents: now we want to atone for our callowness, to take measure of them, to understand which parts of them live on in us.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Pilgrim
Patricia Hampl
‘Real travel wants to be dangerous, wants to smoke out the truth of the Other—providing of course you get out alive.’
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Essays & Memoir|Granta 87![padlock](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%200%200'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Making an Elephant
Graham Swift
‘The death of a father is, in most cases, an inevitable passage of life.’