Best of Granta – serie

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, NOMINATED FOR FOUR ACADEMY AWARDS - INCLUDING BEST PICTUREAn epic miniature of one man's life journey through the American West at the turn of the twentieth century.Robert Grainier is a day labourer in the American West, felling the trees that feed the railways. It is the start of the twentieth century, and the world is changing at a rapid pace.Life is fragile in the wilds of the frontier; disease and forest fires are rife. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainier journeys, struggling to make sense of the bewildering changes transforming the nation.Rich and muscular, sweeping and incantatory, Train Dreams is an epic in miniature: an elegy to the ravaged beauty of a lost landscape, and a haunting indictment of the cost of our modern way of life.'A work of extraordinary power and consummate skill... A masterpiece' Observer'A masterpiece... One of the best prose writers in our time' Michael Ondaatje'I don't think there is a sentence in the book that isn't perfectly made' Ann Patchett, New York Times

'A gem of a book. Quirky, deadpan, poignant and quietly profound' Ruth OzekiThe unexpected international bestseller.Meet Keiko. She's 36 years old, has never had a boyfriend, and she's been working in the same supermarket for eighteen years. Keiko's family wishes she'd get a proper job. Her friends wonder why she won't get married. But Keiko knows what makes her happy, and she's not going to let anyone come between her and her convenience store... A cult hit around the world, Convenience Store Woman is both a feminist rallying cry and a must-read oddball comedy.'Exhilaratingly weird and funny... Unsettling and totally unpredictable - my copy is now heavily underlined' Sally Rooney'Darkly comic' Observer'[A] short, deadpan gem... A true original' Daily Mail'What a weird and wonderful and deeply satisfying book this is. Sayaka Murata is an utterly unique and revolutionary voice. I tore through it with great delight' Jami Attenberg

WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREWINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE'A strange, painfully tender exploration of the brutality of desire indulged and the fatality of desire ignored... Exquisite.' Eimear McBride Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people - dutiful wife and mild-mannered office worker. One day, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares, Yeong-hye decides to become a vegetarian. But in South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, it is a shocking act of subversion. Yeong-hye's passive rebellion rapidly manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, from sexual sadism to attempted suicide, and in increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, as all the while she spirals further into her fantasies...Disturbing and beautiful by turns, The Vegetarian is a revelatory novel about modern day South Korea; a tale of shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others.

From the Women's Prize Shortlisted-author of Weather, an electrifying, funny and wise account of a couple falling out of one another's orbit.'It is the kind of book that you will be quoting over and over to friends who don't quite understand, until they give in and read it too' John Self, Guardian They used to send each other letters. The return address was always the same: Dept. of Speculation. They used to be young, brave, and giddy with hopes for their future. They got married, had a child, and skated through all the small calamities of family life. But then, slowly, quietly something changes. As the years rush by, fears creep in and doubts accumulate until finally their life as they know it cracks apart and they find themselves forced to reassess what they have lost, what is left, and what they want now. Dept. of Speculation navigates the jagged edges of a modern marriage to tell a story that is darkly funny, surprising and wise. 'Funny, and moving, and true... It tells a profound story of love and parenthood while invoking (among others) Keats, Kafka, Einstein, Russian cosmonauts, and advice for the housewife of 1897' Michael Cunningham

'Powerful and brilliant ... Straw Dogs challenges all our assumptions about what it is to be human, and convincingly shows that most of them are delusions.' J. G. Ballard From Plato to Christianity, from the Enlightenment to Nietzsche, the Western tradition has been based on arrogant and erroneous beliefs about human beings and their place in the world. In his radical work of philosophy John Gray sets out to challenge our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human.Philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism enthrone humankind as a species whose destiny is to transcend natural limits and conquer the Earth. Even in the present day, despite Darwin's discoveries, nearly all schools of thought take as their starting point the belief that humans are radically different from other animals. John Gray argues that this belief in human difference is a dangerous illusion and explores how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned. The result is an exhilarating, sometimes disturbing book that leads the reader to question our deepest-held beliefs.

'The sharpest and funniest novel I read this year' Craig Brown, Mail on SundayA hilarious, intelligent cult classic, from one of the most celebrated contemporary novelists. Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid. Fuelled by strong coffee and self-prescribed tranquillizers, every day is a fresh attempt to establish a sense of self and an attitude towards his art. Not helped by his imperfect grasp of Spanish, Adam struggles with the underlying suspicion that his relationships, his reactions, even his entire personality are just as fraudulent as his poetry. Yet while his self-obsession runs riot he is at risk of missing the bigger and more urgent things that threaten to change the world around him in sudden and dramatic ways.One of the funniest and best-loved debut novels of contemporary times, Leaving the Atocha Station is a profound exploration of the creative impulse.'Packed full of gags... Intensely and unusually brilliant' Geoff Dyer, Observer

'I love this book. Put your life on hold while you finish it' Maggie O'FarrellA suspenseful and chilling novel of haunted landscapes and a teenage girl in danger.Seventeen-year-old Silvie is camping in rural Northumberland with her father and a group of archaeologists, who are attempting to uncover evidence of human sacrifice. As Silvie glimpses the possibility of freedom with the students - new female friendships and a sexual awakening - her difficult relationship with her overbearing father begins to deteriorate. As the feelings of dread build the haunting rites of the past begin to bleed into the present...'This book ratcheted the breath out of me so skilfully, that as soon as I'd finished, the only thing I wanted was to read it again' Jessie Burton 'An instant classic' Emma Donoghue 'I loved it' Bernadine Evaristo

WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 'A heartbreaking, beautifully written book. A classic for sure' Claire Tomalin, GuardianExtraordinary true stories of those who lived in East Germany. Travel through the remains of East Germany with Anna Funder as she meets the people who lived in the GDR before the fall of the wall. There is Miriam, condemned as an enemy of the state at sixteen. She hears the heartbreaking story of Frau Paul, who was separated from her young baby by the Berlin Wall. And she gets drunk with the legendary 'Mik Jegger' of the East, a man once declared by the authorities - to his face - to no longer exist. Then she meets the Stasi themselves - men and women who spied on their families and friends - people who, despite everything, are still loyal to the vanished regime and who long for the return of Communism. Stasiland is a gripping portrait of the horror and the absurdities of state oppression. In a world of total surveillance, its celebration of resilience and resistance is as potent as ever. 'A brilliant and necessary book about oppression and history ... Here is someone who knows how to tell the truth' Rachel Cusk 'Superb... Funder skillfully deploys fictional techniques to make the material jump off the page... Vividly conveyed [with] flashes of humour too' Independent on Sunday

'A wonderful evocation of Britain's natural beauty and a reminder of our need to connect with the wilderness' - The Times Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? Or have we farmed and built ourselves out of wildness? From forest to moor, mountain to saltmarsh, Robert Macfarlane explores the wild places of Britain to see the wonders we still possess.In his beautiful, bewitching, inspiring modern classic of nature writing, the acclaimed author of Underland and The Lost Words presents a portrait of a vanishing but still miraculous British landscape. 'Time and again he takes the reader's breath away' - Financial Times'A marvellously evocative portrait of place' - Sunday Telegraph

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE, a darkly funny, offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother. 'The Sisters Brothers confirms deWitt as one of the most talented young writers around' Sunday TimesHermann Kermit Warm is going to die. Across 1000 miles of Oregon desert his assassins, the notorious Eli and Charlies Sisters, ride - fighting, shooting, and drinking their way to Sacramento. But their prey isn't an easy mark, the road is long and bloody, and somewhere along the path Eli begins to question what he does for a living - and who he does it for.Filled with a remarkable cast of losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life - and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier. It beautifully captures the humour, melancholy, and grit of the Old West, through a tale of two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love. 'Superb ... deWitt has ensured another unforgettable pair their place in fictive lore' Sunday TelegraphNOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JAKE GYLLENHAAL, JOHN C. REILLY AND JOAQUIN PHOENIX

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 'Reads like a brilliant miniseries ... has the narrative intensity of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and the emotional punch of Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved.' Observer Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his taller, smarter, and more successful younger brother George acquire a covetable wife, two kids, and a beautiful home in New York City. But Harry also knows his brother has a murderous temper. When George loses control the result is an act of violence so shocking that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives in which they both must seek absolution.Suddenly Harry finds himself playing parent to his brother's two adolescent children, tumbling down a rabbit hole of online sex, and dealing with aging parents who move through life like travellers on a fantastic voyage. And he is forced to confront the ways in which our histories can either compel us to repeat our mistakes - or become the catalyst for change.May We Be Forgiven is a darkly funny tale exploring how one deeply fractured family might begin to put itself back together. 'An unflinching account of a catastrophic, violent, black-comic, transformative year in the history of one broken American family. Flat-out amazing' Salman Rushdie

WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION A spectacular, definitive portrait of ordinary life within one of the world's most repressive states - North Korea. 'A most perceptive and eye-opening account of everyday life in North Korea' Jung ChangNorth Korea is Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four made reality: it is the only country in the world not connected to the internet; where Gone with the Wind is a dangerous, banned book; and where during political rallies, spies study your expression to check your sincerity. Nothing to Envy weaves together the stories of adversity and resilience of six residents of Chongin, North Korea's third-largest city. From extensive interviews and with tenacious investigative work, Barbara Demick has recreated the concerns, culture and lifestyles of North Korean citizens in a gripping narrative, and vividly reconstructed the inner workings of this extraordinary and secretive country. Includes an updated afterword by the author.'Impossible to put down ... helps restore humanity to some of the world's most oppressed people' Observer

A landmark, incendiary collection from one of the leading essayists working today.Inspiring everyone from radical activists to Beyoncé Knowles, Rebecca Solnit's essay 'Men Explain Things to Me' has become a touchstone of the feminist movement and established her as one of the leading thinkers of our time. Here it is collected along with the best of Solnit's feminist writings. From French sex scandals to the nuclear family, rape culture to mansplaining, Virginia Woolf to colonialism, these essays are a fierce and incisive exploration of the issues that a patriarchal culture will not necessarily acknowledge as 'issues' at all. With grace, wit and energy, and in the most exquisite and inviting of prose, Rebecca Solnit proves herself a vital leading figure of the feminist movement and a radical, humane thinker. 'Solnit is a compelling writer with a glorious turn of phrase' Evening Standard

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 'A breathtakingly ambitious mystery ... as beautiful as it is triumphant.' Daily MailAn astonishing, epic story of promise, deceit and desperation in New Zealand's gold rush.'What brings a fellow down here, you know, to the ends of the earth - what sparks a man?' It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky. The Luminaries is an extraordinary piece of fiction, both a ghost story and a gripping mystery. Set amidst the promise, deceit and desperation of the mid-19th century goldrush, the lives of its rich, complex cast unspool through a labyrinthine, celestial pattern. Fiendishly clever, vividly rendered and made into a major BBC TV series, The Luminaries established Catton as one of the brightest stars in the firmament.'A book to curl up with and devour, intricately plotted and extravagantly described, a pastiche of the Victorian sensation novel in the same smart yet playful vein as Sarah Waters.' Guardian

A tale of modern Japan and old-fashioned romance.'Enchanting, moving and funny in equal measure, this compelling love story is expertly crafted against a backdrop of modern Japanese culture' StylistTsukiko is in her late 30s and living alone when one night she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, 'Sensei', in a bar. He is at least thirty years her senior, retired and, she presumes, a widower. After this initial encounter, the pair continue to meet occasionally to share food and drink sake, and as the seasons pass - from spring cherry blossom to autumnal mushrooms - Tsukiko and Sensei come to develop a hesitant intimacy which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love. Strange Weather in Tokyo is perfectly constructed, warmly funny and deeply moving. This edition contains the bonus story, 'Parade', which imagines an ordinary day in the lives of this unusual couple. 'A dream-like spell of a novel, full of humour, sadness, warmth and tremendous subtlety. I read this in one sitting and I think it will haunt me for a long time' Amy Sackville 'Kawakami transforms an affecting cross-generational romance into an exquisite poem of time and mutability.... Delicate and haunting' Independent

'The funniest book I've read in a long time: its deadpan, dry humour and its accumulation of absurdities will leave you rolling on your floor with laughter' The Times She thought she was a lover of the great classics of Russian literature - until she met the superfans...Roaming from Tashkent to San Francisco, this is the true story of one budding writer's strange encounters with the fanatics who are devoted - absurdly! melancholically! ecstatically! - to the Russian classics. Combining fresh readings of the great Russians from Tolstoy to Dostoevsky with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence, The Possessed is comic, humane, charming, poignant and full of an infectious love for literature. 'Dazzlingly good ... very bookish, very clever and very funny... a preposterously engaging volume' Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph 'The highest compliment you can pay such a book is that it sends you back to the original authors refreshed. I can go one higher - I found myself simply wanting to read more from Elif Batuman' Evening Standard 'An intoxicating mix of travel memoir, autobiography, literary criticism and philosophy... Charming and hilarious' Daily Telegraph

'Jefferson's eye for details yields some devastatingly honest and painful insights' The Times'Captivating... Charm is this book's watchword' Colin Grant, Guardian The daughter of a successful paediatrician and a fashionable socialite, Margo Jefferson spent her childhood among Chicago's black elite. She calls this society 'Negroland': 'a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty'. With privilege came expectation. Reckoning with the limits and demands of Negroland at crucial historical moments - the civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, the fallacy of post-racial America - Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions. Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. 'Negroland is a sharp-eyed cultural commentary on an era of America that has often been too simply told' Aminatta Forna, Guardian 'Jefferson writes with piercing clarity of a childhood which was full of love and opportunity at home, but also saturated by contradictions, confusions and a racism which corrodes, like rust, to the heart's core' Observer'Utterly compelling... a remarkable achievement' Sunday Times

'A moving and extraordinary evocation of the 20th-century tragedy of China... compelling' Guardian SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION AND THE MAN BOOKER PRIZEIn Canada in 1991, ten-year-old Marie and her mother invite a guest into their home. Ai- Ming has fled China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests. As her relationship with Marie deepens, Ai-Ming tells the story of her family in revolutionary China, from the crowded teahouses in the first days of Chairman Mao's ascent to the Beijing demonstrations of 1989. And she speaks of three musicians - the shy and brilliant composer Sparrow, the violin prodigy Zhuli, and the enigmatic pianist Kai - who struggled during China's relentless Cultural Revolution to remain loyal to one another and to the music they have devoted their lives to. Their fates reverberate through the years, with deep and lasting consequences for Ai-Ming - and for Marie. Do Not Say We Have Nothing magnificently brings to life one of the most significant political regimes of the 20th century and its traumatic legacy. 'A magnificent epic of Chinese history, richly detailed and beautifully written' Kate Saunders, The Times

'There is a sense throughout Athill's work that you are making a new friend as much as reading a new story ... a delight to read' Observer WINNER OF THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY PRIZE, the moving and witty memoir on what it means to grow old. Written in her nineties, when she was free from any inhibitions she may have once had, Diana Athill reflects frankly on the losses and occasionally the gains that old age can bring, and on the wisdom and fortitude required to face death. Lively, fearless and humorous, Somewhere Towards the End encapsulates the vibrant final decades of Athill's life. Filled with events, love and friendships, this is a memoir about maintaining hope, joy and vigour in later life, resisting regret, and questioning the beliefs and customs of your own generation. 'Informative, honest and lacking in the usual sorrow over old age. A remarkable woman' Beryl Bainbridge'An honest joy to read' Alice Munro'The book is a moving and humorous account of old age, unsparing about its indignities, unflinching from the inevitability that the end can not be many years away, but full of joy at the way life keeps on, at the most unexpected moments, renewing itself' Irish Times 'Her brilliant book is entirely lacking in the usual regrets, nostalgia and Hovis-ad recollections of old-timers. It is a little literary gem, penned by a marvellous, feisty old character ... What a treasure' Daily Mail

In an Antique Land is a subversive history in the guise of a traveller's tale. When the author stumbles across a slave narrative in the margins of an ancient text, his curiosity is piqued. What follows is a ten year search, which brings author and slave together across 800 hundred years of colonial history. Bursting with anecdote and exuberant detail, it offers a magical, intimate biography of the private life of a country, Egypt, from the Crusades to Operation Desert Storm.

Martha Gellhorn's peacetime dispatches bear witness to six decades of change: America in the Great Depression, the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, young Poles undaunted by their Communist government, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Spain in the days after Franco's death, Cuba revisited after forty-one years. Here is history as it looked and felt to the people who lived through it. Intense, courageous and vividly readable, The View from the Ground is a remarkable act of testimony.With a new introduction by Sam Knight, author of The Premonitions Bureau.

Edward Said experienced both British and American imperialism as the old Arab order crumbled in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This account of his early life reveals how it influenced his books Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism. Edward Said was born in Jerusalem and brought up in Cairo, spending every summer in the Lebanese mountain village of Dhour el Shweir, until he was 'banished' to America in 1951. This work is a mixture of emotional archaeology and memory, exploring an essentially irrecoverable past. As ill health sets him thinking about endings, Edward Said returns to his beginnings in this personal memoir of his ferociously demanding 'Victorian' father and his adored, inspiring, yet ambivalent mother.Now with a new introduction by Hisham Matar.