Category: Granta

Home: Reflections for Anthony Shadid

AUG 2, 2012

This week, Anthony Shadid’s memoir  House of Stone – which tells of the author’s attempts to rebuild his dilapidated family home in Marjayoun, Lebanon and in turn of a search for identity in a restless Middle East – was published in the UK. To celebrate, Granta is publishing a series of short meditations by writers including Teju Cole, Rawi Hage, Ha Jin, A.L. Kennedy, Yiyun Li and Santiago Roncagliolo on where we think of – if anywhere – when we think of going home.

As part of Anthony Shadid week, granta.com has also published an interview with the author, a travelogue by photographer Michael Robinson-Chavez on his time on assignment in Iraq with Shadid and a guide to Lebanese street food by Annia Ciezadlo.  [full story]

Of Mustaches and Megalomaniacs

AUG 28, 2011

In the autumn of 1990, my father, who had been clean-shaven all his life, decided to experiment; he grew a moustache.

Nobody cool in America had a moustache in those days. Magnum PI, which starred Tom Selleck and his moustache, had already been off the air for a few years. Even worse, Saddam Hussein had a moustache. And more than anyone else in suburban Baltimore, where I was stuck in my junior year of high school, my father – with his moustache – looked a lot like Saddam Hussein.  [full story]