Granta: The Magazine of New Writing Series

Granta 117

by John Freeman

Published 27 October 2011

'Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.' - Arthur Conan Doyle

We all go back: to the house or town where we were raised, to an old friend or lover, to an idea or belief we abandoned long ago. But can we ever trust our memories? And what if it still proves impossible to return? In this latest issue of Granta, writers meditate on these essential questions from an exciting array of vantage points. Richard Russo returns home to Gloversville, NY, the dying upstate town which once made one out of every three pairs of gloves in the world - and is now on the verge of extinction. Janine di Giovanni revisits Bosnia and the children she met there during the conflict of the early nineties. The issue will feature new fiction by up-and-coming writer Claire Vaye Watkins, a blistering critique, by American essayist Hal Crowther, of the internet's erosion of solitude, and a new story set in contemporary Lagos by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Exclusively on Granta.com: Owen Sheers returns to Zimbabwe, plus new poetry from Troy Jollimore.

Granta 114

by John Freeman

Published 10 February 2011

Granta 125

by John Freeman

Published 17 October 2013

Granta 121

by John Freeman

Published 8 November 2012

Since Granta's inaugural list of the Best of Young British Novelists in 1983 - featuring Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes - the Best of Young issues have been some of the magazine's most influential. In 2010, Granta looked beyond the English-speaking world with Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists. Now, with its first-ever issue fully translated from Portuguese in partnership with Granta em Portugues, the magazine continues its work of celebrating emerging talent from around the world. Submissions by young and promising authors from across Brazil have been read and discussed by a judging panel comprised of the country's foremost literary figures - including Manuel da Costa Pinto, coordinator of the Paraty Literary Festival, Cristovao Tezza is one of the most important writers in the country, and Benjamin Moser, author of a biography on Clarice Lispector. Their final choices will introduce the world to the diversity and uniqueness of Brazilian literature today.

Granta 116

by John Freeman

Published 25 August 2011

Ten years later, where are we looking? How do we see things differently? From Ground Zero to Kampala to London to Mumbai, the echoes are still heard, the impact is still felt. The way we interact, the way we travel, our relationship to media and technology, and the very way we regard the world we live in have all been irrevocably changed. Granta 116 will examine the consequences of the attacks that occurred on 11 September 2001 from a global perspective. Rather than recounting where we were when it happened and what we saw, this issue will look at how our lives and viewpoints have been altered since that day. Declan Walsh reports from the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan: breeding ground for Al Qaeda and target of U.S. drone strikes. Elliott Woods travels across the US, talking to recruits, noncombatants and veterans and taking the pulse of a nation a decade at war. Pico Iyer considers what air travel is like in the post-9/11 security state; Nicole Krauss writes a melancholy, impressionistic portrait of family, war, life and death in Paris.
Adam Johnson and Nuruddin Farah provide extracts from forthcoming novels: in Johnson's, the 'third mate' on a North Korean fishing trawler listens in on mysterious radio transmissions; in Farah's, a father pleads with a Somali warlord for help finding his runaway son. Showcasing some of the most insightful essayists, fiction writers, poets and visual artists working today, Ten Years Later will explore the complexity of how we regard an event that forever shifted our conceptions of fear, anger and hope.

Granta 122

by John Freeman

Published 17 January 2013

Granta 113

by John Freeman

Published 25 November 2010

Granta 109

by John Freeman

Published 14 January 2010

Granta 110

by John Freeman

Published 1 April 2010

Sex is our oldest obsession. For as long as we've been doing it, it has been used as a mark of decline and a measure of progress. It has been at the centre of rituals and responsible for revolutions. We make money from it, hide behind it, prohibit and promote it. It relaxes us, revolts us, hurts us and helps us. But whatever we think about it, however we do it, it defines us. Mark Doty examines the phenomenon of being a gay man who once married a woman rather than come out of the closet. Brian Chikwava recounts the history of revolution and sexual liberation in Zimbabwe. Jeanette Winterson offers up a wickedly irreverent modern-day myth about sex and the gods, and Jennifer Egan contributes a piece of fiction about a strung-out, disillusioned music producer. Other contributors include Herta Muller and Dave Eggers and Marie Darrieussecq . We're also pleased to present a previously unpublished piece of prose by the late Roberto Bolano.

Granta 119

by John Freeman

Published 10 May 2012

Granta 107

by Alex Clark and John Freeman

Published 31 July 2009

Granta 115

by John Freeman

Published 19 May 2011

Granta 108

by John Freeman

Published 5 October 2009

Granta 118

by John Freeman

Published 2 February 2012

Be it a wrong turn, a bad relationship, a debilitating illness or a war, every action creates a reaction, every move is followed by another move. How do we get out of what we've gotten ourselves into? Granta 118 zooms in close on the phenomenon of the exit strategy. In a new story, Alice Munro writes of an elderly woman whose attempts to care for her husband are undermined by her own deteriorating thought processes; Claire Messud searches for her father's past in Beirut, Lebanon as he lays dying in a hospital in the US; and Aleksandar Hemon remembers the importance of smuggling his family's dog out of war-torn Sarajevo. Exit Strategies also features new writing by John Barth, Gish Jen, Ann Beattie, and newcomer Chinelo Okparanta - examining how we get ourselves out and the repercussions that follow. Hindsight is 20/20, but it's what we do moving forward that defines us and - in the best of all worlds - redeems us. Back Cover Text none

Granta 123

by John Freeman

Published 16 April 2013

Granta 124

by John Freeman

Published 18 July 2013

Hari Kunzru travels to Chernobyl, Detroit, and Japan to investigate the phenomenon of disaster tourism. Policeman-turned-detective-turned-writer A Yi describes life as a provincial gumshoe in China. Physician Siddhartha Mukherjee visits a government hospital in New Delhi, where he meets Madha Sengupta, at the end of his life and on the frontiers of medicine. Robert Macfarlane explores the limestone world beneath the Peak District. And Haruki Murakami revisits his walk to Kobe in the aftermath of the 1995 earthquake. In this issue--which includes poems by Charles Simic and Ellen Bryant Voigt, a story by Miroslav Penkov, and non-fiction by David Searcy, Teju Cole, and Hector Abad--GRANTA presents a panoramic view of our shared landscape and investigates our motivations for exploring it. "One's destination is never a place," Henry Miller wrote, "but a new way of seeing things."

Granta 105

by Alex Clark

Published 27 March 2009

Granta 106

by Alex Clark

Published 8 May 2009