For one hundred years, there has been a magazine able to tell the
world's story, from the fall of Saigon to the myth of the Titanic, from
psychotherapy to the sounds made by chickens, all through the voices of
writers who are young and well-known, emerging and talented.
That magazine is Granta,
founded in 1889 by a group of students at the University of Cambridge,
and bearing an early name for the river that flows through the city.
After a difficult period during the 1970's due to a lack of funds
and growing apathy, the journal recovered under a group of graduates
who relaunched it and gave it a new start. Since 1979, the year of its
rebirth, Granta has published some of the most prestigious
writers in the world, among them Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, Ian
McEwan, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Saul Bellow, Milan
Kundera, Arundhati Roy, and Zadie Smith.
In November 2007, on the occasion of its one hundredth issue, Granta
wished to offer its writers and readers a Moleskine notebook suitable
for celebrating that important milestone. The idea was to have a
personalized notebook, with a logo on the cover and on the paper band,
and a 32-page pamphlet added at the back, printed in full color on
ivory paper with a collection of one hundred magazine covers published
since 1979.
This was a unique way for the magazine to share its history with a
public that had followed it over the years, a public that put a high
value on this magazine that, while it did not support any particular
literary manifesto, did always believe in the power and the urgency of
narrative, and in its capacity to describe, illuminate, and make real.
For further info: www.granta.com
