Series: Best of Granta

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,...

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...

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 PRIZE In 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...

The Sisters Brothers is shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It is 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 Times Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. Across 1000 miles of Oregon desert, his assassins, the notorious Eli and...

The 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...

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' Stylist Tsukiko 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...

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...

I love this book. Put your life on hold while you finish it – Maggie O'Farrell A 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...

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...

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....

'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...

WINNER 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...

Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his attitude towards art. Fuelled by strong coffee and self-prescribed tranquillizers, Adam's 'research' soon becomes a meditation on the possibility of authenticity, as he finds himself increasingly troubled by the uncrossable distance between himself and...

An 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;...