Granta 91: Wish You Were Here

Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #91

by Ian Jack (Editor), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Helon Habila

The author of the celebrated and widely-acclaimed The Smoking Diaries, returns to print, with a tender, affecting, and of course funny account of his friendship with Alan Bates, written as he waits in Barbados for Harold Pinter to turn up.

Genres: Essays, Travel

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2005

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

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not so much a critique of the authors as a comment on my own tastes, no doubt, but I could find no redeeming features in Ismael Kadaré's 'The Great Wall' (a sub-Kafka story), Gilad Evron's 'The Falcon' (cruel and visceral for no other reason than that) and Frederic Tuten's 'The Ship At Anchor' (Russell Hoban might at least have made the magic seem realistic). Simon Gray appears to have been living in the 19th Century when he wrote 'Wish You Were Here'. The best thing about this issue was Geoff Dyer's 'White Sands', but even that wasn't up to his usual high standard.