A real bungalow is stone
and snow white mud
on the inner walls,
a large grate
and a slate floor
and a picture of itself.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘The issue was the first of its kind. Trust me, it said. I know what I am talking about. These young writers are the future of literature. Watch. History will prove me right.’ – Bill Buford, Granta editor (1979-95)
‘Cover your nose and mouth, the order came, swift and useless; if they’d had their turbans they would have wound them around their faces but there were only the balaclavas.’
Fiction by Kamila Shamsie from the 2013 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘She felt exhausted, emptied out; she thought of the day that had passed – it was astonishing to her, that a single set of hours could contain so many separate states of violent feeling.’
Fiction by Sarah Waters from the 2003 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘This is the one thing I know from the minute I lift the receiver and slip that voice inside my ear: it will happen.’
Fiction by A.L. Kennedy from the 1993 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘As it was, my grandfather began helping me to paint without my having to ask him.’
Fiction by Kazuo Ishiguro from the 1983 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘It was a commonplace / to enter the woods / with meat, lay it on the ground, then / wait for what might come.’
Poetry by Michael Bazzett.
‘Ungraceful, the heart boinks: / drugged, suspended, spiderwebbed – ’
Four poems by Katie Farris.
‘Most of us these days are dead or on autopilot / As for the wolves – they thrive’
Two poems by Claudine Toutoungi.
‘you gotta see this truck that ignored the height sign / on the underpass and now it’s lodged like an overlarge pill’
A poem by Nathalie Shapero.
‘I hope I never have to miss a playdate for catechism.’
An excerpt from Oldladyvoice, translated from the Spanish by Charlotte Whittle.
