Granta 99: What Happened Next

Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #99

by Granta: The Magazine of New Writing

Richard Ford interviewed by Tim the aftermath of Dirty Realism; Owen Sheers on the consequences of Christmas Island's nuclear past; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on the death of her high-school sweetheart; and Katya Krausova on the survivors of the Slovakian Holocaust.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literature

255 pages

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

Granta magazine was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge University as The Granta, a periodical of student politics, student badinage and student literary enterprise, named after the river that runs through the town. In this original incarnation it had a long and distinguished history, publishing the early work of many writers who later became well known, including A. A. Milne, Michael Frayn, Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. During the 1970s, it ran into trouble – dwindling money, mounting apathy – from which it was rescued by a small group of postgraduates who successfully and surprisingly relaunched it as a magazine of new writing, with both writers and their audience drawn from the world beyond Cambridge.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roberto Saviano's 'Naples 04' is utterly harrowing; Philip Hoare's 'Whaling' is beautiful, tragic and thought-provoking. An above-average issue, in spite of Tessa Hadley's disappointing short story.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the interview with Richard Ford seemed stilted, three other pieces in this issue stand out: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's remembrance of an old "boyfriend," the story of the Naples mob violence, and the piece about whaling. I'm never interested in every piece published in any one issue, but I always end up reading every word. There's always something worth it and that's why I've been a long time subscriber.

[Declan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the non-fiction essays to be the most interesting element of this issue of Granta. There's a wonderful piece by Kitty Hauser about a man called O. G. S. Crawford who had an extraordinary ability to read a landscape and discern its history. There are also two horrific pieces that tell different stories about the appalling actions of which humans are capable: Roberto Saviano writes about the Camorra in Naples and Philip Hoare writes about whaling.