Granta 18: The Snap Revolution

Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #18

by Bill Buford (Editor)

‘We had found our way, we realized, into the Marcoses’ private rooms. It seemed to me that in every room I saw, practically on every available surface, there was a signed photograph of Nancy Reagan. But this can hardly be true. It just felt as if there was a lot of Nancy in evidence.’ Also in this issue: Seamus Deane, Primo Levi, David Hare, and John Berger.

Paperback

First published May 15, 1986

About the author

William Holmes Buford is an American author and journalist. He is the author of the books Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. Buford was previously the fiction editor for The New Yorker, where he is still on staff. For sixteen years, he was the editor of Granta, which he relaunched in 1979. He is also credited with coining the term "dirty realism".

Reviews

[Victoria & David Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fine James Fenton reportage (circa 1986): the Philippines at a pivotal moment when the unpopular Marcos issues a snap election and the populace responds with a snap revolution. Fenton is on the ground. in the jungle, and in Manila as it all suddenly comes together. Also, particularly good fiction from Alice Munro and Thomas Berger and a fine slithery essay on eels from Adam Nicolson.
Another fine issue from Granta.

[Neil Kenealy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stories of Filipino revolution of 1985 when Cory Aquino got into power after Marcos called a snap election that snapped back in his face from James Fenton.
Ronald Reagan pulled the plug on Marcos and he deflated.
Wetlands by Nicholson is a brilliant story about the lives of eels. Seamus Deane's haunted is kindof OK but a bit rambling.