Granta 59: France: The Outsider

Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #59

by Ian Jack (Editor)

What has happened to France — the universal nation, the tutor of the good life, the place we visited to feel the kiss of a superior civilization? This issue presents fresh new voices from a country searching for a new idea of itself.

Genres: France, Nonfiction, Anthologies

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1997

About the author

Ian Jack is a British journalist and writer who has edited the Independent on Sunday and the literary magazine Granta and now writes regularly for The Guardian.

Reviews

[Isla McKetta · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Luc Sante piece perfectly encapsulated my experience with language. The rest was uneven, with too few female contributors.

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Works ( blend of fiction, non-fiction and photo-essay), mostly on the idea of France (in the late 1990s), by Michel Houellebecq, John Davis, Assia Djebar, David Macey, Patrick Chamoiseau, Caroline Lamarche, Luc Sante, Pierre Merle, Rene Belletto, Raymond Depardon, Brian Cathart, Ivan Klima, John McGahern and Harold Pinter.

Reading a lot of these old Grantas I had over the past few years. Struck by how they are often able to bring in first rate talent (for instance Houellebecq, Sante or Pinter here) but that it is rather mediocre works from those A-list writers. Also, and maybe this is just my mood these days, the non-fiction works are almost always better than the fiction.