

Sign in to Granta.com.
Christophe de Bellaigue on what happened when free speech came to the ayatollahs' Tehran.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘The slutty ingenuity of vegetables when it comes to desire and reproductive methods is a marvel.’
Rebecca May Johnson negotiates allotment culture.
‘Globalisation is incomplete: money can go anywhere, but laws cannot.’
Oliver Bullough on one of Britain’s most contested outposts: the British Virgin Islands.
‘You discover during your very first lessons that the problem of singing better involves overcoming many other problems you had not ever imagined.’
A new story from Lydia Davis.
‘She began to count; it was easier this way, counting, because she would not have to remember how she felt.’
An excerpt from Ukamaka Olisakwe’s Ogadinma.
‘Like any desert, I learn myself by what’s desired of me—
and I am demoned by those desires.’
From Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz.
Christopher de Bellaigue is a journalist who has worked on the Middle East and South Asia since 1994. He is the author of In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran and The Islamic Enlightenment.
More about the author →‘As I observed the foreigners at the museum, who turned out mostly to be archaeologists, two American soldiers crossed towards the group.’
‘Is anyone an authority on themselves, whether on their sexuality or anything else?’
‘Justine was at my lab table, pulling at the ends of her black bob, shoving her hair into her mouth.’
‘The moments of relief in this awful year that will stick with me are roaming around at strange hours, walking in the middle of the road.’
‘Our globalised world of easyJet and Google Translate does not seem to have fostered any greater understanding’
The copyright to all contents of this site is held either by Granta or by the individual authors, and none of the material may be used elsewhere without written permission. For reprint enquiries, contact us.