Granta 44: The Last Place on Earth

Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #44

by Bill Buford (Editor)

Many fine pieces make up this Granta issue. There's Thomas Kern's photo journal of Sarajevo, and Ivan Klima's childhood in Terezin. And then there's Bruce Chatwin and his moleskin journals. From one of them comes a selection titled "The Road to Ouidah," starting 2 January 1971 in Niamey, Niger, and ending 9 February in Cotonou en route to Ouidah. Personal travel sketches not meant for publication, they ring with the familiar barbed clarity of Chatwin's published perceptions. But it's Paul Theroux's "Chatwin Revisited" that is the most touching. He recalls Chatwin's rapid, intense speechifying ("Chatter, chatter, chatter, Chatwin" they called him), his perfect mimicry, and audacious boastfulness. He recollects Chatwin's secretive nature, his writer's motto: "I don't believe in coming clean." But in the end, it's his sudden departures his friends remember. Theroux says that Chatwin's death was like that--like he was all of a sudden off on another journey. "It seems strange, but not unlike him," writes Theroux in 1993, "that he has been gone so long."

Genres: Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1993

About the author

William Holmes Buford is an American author and journalist. He is the author of the books Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. Buford was previously the fiction editor for The New Yorker, where he is still on staff. For sixteen years, he was the editor of Granta, which he relaunched in 1979. He is also credited with coining the term "dirty realism".

Reviews

[Victoria & David Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superlative selections: from the story of Pol Pot's sister-in-law to Paul Auster and Bruce Chatwin, Tracy Kidder, Nadine Gordimer, T C Boyle, Tobias Wolff. I'm currently reading / rereading all 162 issues and this is among the very best.

[George Mavronisiotis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Must read: Ivan Klima/ Childhood in Terezin
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