The New Granta Book of the Family
You can’t choose your relatives. But you can love them, loathe them, rage against them or take after them. Right from the earliest issues of Granta, writing about the family, whether as fiction or personal memoir, has been one of the magazine’s strongest elements. Some of the finest pieces from the first fifteen years, 1979 to 1994, were collected in the first Granta Book of the Family, published in 1995. Now, this second volume brings together a new collection of pieces from 1995 to the present, all of which explore the complicated, often fraught relationships that families involve.
With contributions by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Diana Athill
Urvashi Butalia
Raymond Carver
Robyn Davidson
Anne Enright
David Goldblatt
Linda Grant
A.M. Homes
Jackie Kay
A.L. Kennedy
Hanif Kureishi
John Lanchester
Hilary Mantel
John McGahern
Blake Morrison
Orhan Pamuk
Tim Parks
Jayne Anne Phillips
Justine Picardie
Anna Pyasetskaya
Jeremy Seabrook
Helen Simpson
Ali Smith
Graham Smith
Graham Swift
Edmund White
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The New Granta Book of the Family includes A.L. Kennedy on ‘battling’ Joe Price, the grandfather she loved, Linda Grant on her struggle with her mother in early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, A.M. Homes on finally meeting her biological father, Robyn Davidson on her unexpected ‘marriage’ to Eddie, an Aborigine, Anna Pyasetsskaya’s heartbreaking search for her son’s body during the chaos of the Chechen war, and David Goldblatt’s attempts to cope with the aftermath of his father’s murder. It also includes stories by John McGahern, Blake Morrison, Hilary Mantel, Orhan Pamuk, Graham Swift, Jayne Anne Phillips, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Raymond Carver. This is a book rich with experience and wisdom, which contains some of the best writing in English.
‘If you were to buy one last hardback before December’s Budget (or, let’s face it, ever) this might be the one to choose.’ Yvonne Nolan, Irish Times
‘Are We Related? The New Granta Book of the Family is turning into an endless pleasure, finding something rich and complex in the family history boom’ Peter Bradshaw, writing in the Evening Standard’s special feature on the best books of the Year