Issues
← Back to all issuesGranta 9: John Berger, Boris
Autumn 1983
Boris: a story of love and pain and self-destruction. Also a chronicle of an obsession with political and historical implications that extend far beyond its seemingly straightforward, spartan narrative. Plus Gabriel García Marquez on ‘The Solitude of Latin America’, with Mario Vargas Llosa and José Donoso.
From this Issue
|Granta 9
The Bird of Paradise Lost
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
‘Hudson had been a professional collector of birds in the pampas as a young man, employed first by the Smithsonian in the United States.’
|Granta 9
The Boat Train
Russell Hoban
‘The train wheels, now authorized to take up their song of distance, clacked and clattered their traditional shanty of miles.’
|Granta 9
Niagara
Frederic Prokosch
‘Thomas Wolfe's enormous body and low, grumbling voice made the cutlery look like trinkets in a brittle Lilliput.’
|Granta 9
The Story of a Massacre
Mario Vargas Llosa
‘They spoke naturally - without any sense of guilt - and were intrigued and surprised that people had come from so far away, and that there was so much excitement, because of one little incident.’
|Granta 9
The Border
Patrick Marnham
‘This impression was supplied simply by the knowledge that I was in El Salvador. This was not Mexico or Panama.’
|Granta 9
A Day in the Life in El Salvador
Manlio Argueta
‘I have not failed you, José. I understand that you were saying goodbye when you opened your eye, and that, besides greeting me, you were expressing your pride in me, seeing me standing with my arm around the shoulders of your granddaughter.’
|Granta 9
September 11, 1973
Joan Jara
‘Victor was due that morning to sing at the Technical University, at the opening of a special exhibition about the horrors of civil war and fascism where Allende was going to speak.’
|Granta 9
The Country House
José Donoso
‘It was the season when unwholesome rumours were bred spontaneously, as life breeds in stagnant waters gone foul.’
|Granta 9
Lance
Sheila Rowbotham
‘Lance worked as a mining engineer near Calcutta for twelve years under the British Raj, with the nationalist movement rumbling threateningly on the outskirts of their world of colonial privilege.’
|Granta 9
Pan Lives
Russell Hoban
‘The child by the window is not thinking of the brevity of life, the child has as yet no idea of it.’
|Granta 9
A Short History of Coronation Ale
Graham Swift
‘Rest assured, it was no ordinary ale that they drank by the Ouse while in Westminster crowds thronged.’
|Granta 9
Greasy Lake
T. Coraghessan Boyle
‘I contemplated the car. It lay there like a wreck along the highway, like a steel sculpture left over from a vanished civilization.’
|Granta 9
Pefkos
David Harsent
‘When he began to walk again, he was picturing himself sitting beside her in their usual bar, drinking a cold beer and smoking a cigarette.’
|Granta 9
New York
James Wolcott
‘Shiny and bright and compact, 'Heartburn’ whirrs along, not so much a novel as an appliance - an appliance whose inner workings are on the fritz.’
|Granta 9
Poland
Ronald Sukenick
‘Most of those released have trouble finding work, some have been suspended with seventy-five per cent pay, and others must now work freelance or get jobs writing for publications like technical journals.’
