Search results for ""Author Granta""

As with the first two Young British Novelists issues, Granta's 2003 list was compelling and prescient. The issue introduced readers to fiction by Zadie Smith, David Mitchell and Monica Ali. From Ben Rice's story of marital crises among Koi fanciers to Hari Kunzru's account of the development of a Bollywood-inspired computer virus, the issue showcases the multifacetedness and vibrancy of contemporary British literature.

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Did an enormous collision in the Asteroid Belt, orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter, bombard Earth with meteorites 470 million years ago? Astonishing new research suggests it did, and a revolutionary theory is emerging that this bombardment resulted in the single greatest increase in biological diversity on the planet since the origin of life. Introducing these discoveries to the general public for the first time, Ted Nield challenges the view that meteorites are bad news. Tracing the history of meteorites from the first recorded strike to the videos made routinely today, he reveals the fascinating ways in which meteorites have transformed from omens of doom to a stepping stone to Mars in twenty-first-century space exploration. The Falling Sky will shatter everything you thought you knew about one of the most terrifying forces in the universe.

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After a noisy upbringing as one of six children, and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland began to crave silence. Over the past five years, she has spent periods of silence in the Sinai Desert and the Australian bush and on the Isle of Skye. She interweaves these experiences with the history of silence told through fairy tale and myth, Western and Eastern religious traditions, the Enlightenment and psychoanalysis, up to the ambivalence towards silence in contemporary society. Maitland has built a hermitage on an isolated Scottish moor, and the book culminates powerfully with her experiences of silence in this new home.

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Tom de Freston (born 1983) is a British artist and writer, living and working in Oxford. De Freston’s multimedia art tackles themes of trauma, humanity and intimacy across paintings, films and performance. He builds rich visual narratives, drawing on literature, art history and social issues. He graduated from Cambridge University in 2007 and since 2008 has exhibited his work in over twenty shows to date. A prolific author, Granta published de Freston’s debut non-fiction book, Wreck, in 2022 and his second will be released in 2024. Julia and the Shark (Hachette, 2021), created with his wife Kiran Millwood Hargrave, won the Waterstones Children’s Gift of the Year and was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation. De Freston was chosen to illustrate the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of David Almond’s Skellig, published in 2023.I Saw This was born out of a collaboration between de Freston, filmmaker Mark Jones and Dr Ali Souleman after de Freston was introduced to the academic in 2017. The paintings and mixed-media works that resulted from the project are an exploration into Souleman’s experiences of terrorism, displacement and war in Syria and ruminate on how art can attempt to represent suffering and terror. In 1996, a bomb explosion in Damascus on New Year’s Eve nearly killed Souleman and left him blind. A sensitive and highly-charged topic, Souleman explained to de Freston the importance of engaging with what is happening in Syria. Disembodied mouths, hands and feet appear frequently in the works. Circles recur as a motif, which bear an uncomfortable resemblance to eyes and eye sockets. In the Mirror paintings which stand upright in black boxes, de Freston embeds ash, screws, thick glue, dirt and bits of wood into the canvas. They are corporeal and volcanic, visceral and abstract. The sense of molten heat in the paintings was compounded by a fire in de Freston’s studio in 2020, which was simultaneously destructive while giving the artist and the collaboration new momentum.The singular artistic process between the three men involves de Freston describing the paintings to Souleman through words and touch. Souleman brings fresh meaning to the works by reading them in new ways, grounding them in his psychological landscape. Mark Jones captures these interactions in striking photographs and film footage. The collaborators’ close relationships, with each of their practices feeding into the others’, shine through.Habda Rashid, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Kettle’s Yard and the Fitzwilliam Museum, introduces I Saw This and considers the challenges and significance of incorporating elements from real life. Journalist Yasmina Floyer’s contribution describes her reaction to de Freston’s work at his From Darkness exhibition at No 20 Arts, where she found that the sooty-black feet stencils and inky circles depicted resonated with her own experience of child loss. The moving text shows how de Freston’s art carries both specific and universal meanings. Editor Matt Price elaborates on the collaborative process and identifies layers of symbolism across the project, structuring his essay with fascinating quotes from Abu al-Ala al-Ma’arri, the eleventh-century blinded Arab philosopher. Crucially, de Freston, Jones and Souleman’s voices are present in the book, with each shedding light on their part in the project. De Freston’s art is rooted in empathy and I Saw This is a culmination of this, successfully translating Souleman’s world of memory and metaphor.

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