Granta contributors and friends of the magazine share their year in reading.
‘Usually, if you’ve read someone’s stories and seen their photos, you’d feel like you knew the man.’
A short story by Saadat Hasan Manto, translated by Matt Reeck.
Our most read fiction published in 2025, including David Szalay, Erin Somers, Stephanie Wambugu and Gary Indiana.
‘The voiceover said that while the earliest prisoners sent to the island were dangerous criminals, a new brand of inmates at the Cellular Jail were revolutionaries – they came to prison “as if they were going to a temple”.’
Amitava Kumar on the Andamans Islands.
Our ten most read pieces of non-fiction, including memoir, reportage and interviews by Fernanda Eberstadt, William T. Vollmann, Aatish Taseer, Tao Lin, and others.
Granta 173: India
The Killing of a Canadian Sikh
Karan Mahajan
‘What appeared to be a single extrajudicial killing now looked like a program to eliminate Khalistani activists across North America.’
Karan Mahajan on the killing of a Canadian Sikh.
Transformations
Umesh Solanki
‘I never felt like going to Jivo’s house. I used to think, “A Bhangya’s house, the house of the lowest of untouchables, is dirty.”’
Fiction by Umesh Solanki, translated by Gopika Jadeja.
A Measure of Martyrdom
Vivek Shanbhag
‘I didn’t mention Shami to my wife, I am not sure why. Maybe, deep down, I wanted to keep her a secret.’
Fiction by Vivek Shanbhag, translated by Srinath Perur.
Reclaiming the Territory
Salman Rushdie
‘It was awful to get sued by the prime minister of India.’
Granta interviews Salman Rushdie about his dealings with the magazine, the course of Indian fiction and his brushes with Indian politics.
All at Once
Geetanjali Shree
‘How easy it was to come back and give the daughter a father and the father a daughter, when she was small and he was big.’
Fiction by Geetanjali Shree, translated Daisy Rockwell.
Online Series | Dead to Me
Playground Girls
Sophie Kemp
‘The first girls who were ever dead to me were the playground girls.’
Sophie Kemp on childhood and playground politics.
Ride or Die
Megan Nolan
‘The first rule of this friendship is that it is devoted, overly so, as intrinsic and codependent and borderline morbid as any ill-fated romance.’
Megan Nolan on intense friendships.
Together
Eileen Myles
‘It’s a toss-up between the meanest friend breakup and the most absent one.’
Eileen Myles on friendships that begin with fights.
C’mon Billy
Lauren J. Joseph
‘We weren’t fucking but we slept in the same bed, not out of necessity but out of a shared feeling that it would be inexcusable to waste even a second.’
Lauren J. Joseph on friendships and fallouts.
Thomas, Tommy
Ralf Webb
‘We were forced into extreme proximity. Understandably, he found my behaviours insufferable.’
Ralf Webb on friendship and loathing.
A Supposedly Close Friend I Might Never See Again
Audun Mortensen
‘He seemed to relish the reactions sparked by his open ambition.’
Audun Mortensen on friendship, ambition, and ‘Norway’s ugliest town’.
From the Archive
Head Above Water
Buchi Emecheta
‘Inside, I knew it was more complicated: I knew I was both – a “bush” girl and a civilized Christian.’
Buchi Emecheta on her childhood in Lagos.
The Black Sheep
Italo Calvino
‘And then one day – nobody knows how – an honest man appeared.’
Fiction by Italo Calvino
Shrinks
Edmund White
‘Self-doubt, which is a cousin to self-hatred, became my constant companion.’
Edmund White on psychology, spirituality and submission.
The Vegetarian
Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith
Winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature
Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more ‘plant-like’ existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares. In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye’s decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism.
Fraught, disturbing and beautiful, The Vegetarian is a novel about modern day South Korea, but also a novel about shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.
