Granta 73: Necessary Journeys

Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #73

by Ian Jack (Editor)

Travel is no longer a luxury and not always an entertainment. Many journeys need to be made‹to get home or away from an enemy, to work, to find a last resting place, or because someone has told you to go. This issue of Granta is about such journeys; you might call it necessary travel writing, with Decca Aitkenhead: looking for cheap sex and drugs; Manuel Bauer: a child¹s escape over the Himalayas; Isabel Hilton: what have they done to Beijing?; Ian Jack: the train crash that stopped Britain; Ryszrd Kapuscinski: in the forests of Cameroon; Ian McEwan: on the retreat to Dunkirk, 1940; John Ryle: the last Emperor makes his last journey; Dayanita Singh: inside a sanctuary for girls in Benares; Simon Winchester: how Britain and the US made a people homeless; plus the untold story of how the FBI pursued James Baldwin at home, revealed by James Campbell. Granta is the paperback magazine of new writing. Every issue features the best new fiction, reportage, memoir and photography, generally collected under a theme.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, Short Stories, Anthologies

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 26, 2001

About the author

Ian Jack is a British journalist and writer who has edited the Independent on Sunday and the literary magazine Granta and now writes regularly for The Guardian.

Reviews

[Brock · Rating 4 out of 5]

a bunch of great stories and articles. bits and pieces of the world in chapters. if you imagine the rest of the globe layed out in a vast archive of stories in Granta magazines, these would be some very small pieces in a beautifically intricate puzzle :)

[Mitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

This varied collection will instruct, though some of the content is now outdated, in a wide variety of areas that are sometimes of interest, and sometimes not- depending on the tastes of the reader. Personally, I found myself trapped into learning FAR more than I ever wanted into learning about the make-up of railroad rails. You have been warned!

Likewise, there are discouraging accounts of mankind's inhumanity to man in various venues.

It's an eclectic mix, most assuredly.

[Cherie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A- Great edition of Granta, lots of travel essays and other great pieces.