Granta: 152 books

'As with the commander of an army, or the leader of any enterprise, so it is with a Great Writer and his house.' Great Writer's Household Tips covers all your household needs, indoors and outdoors, from pruning a rose bush with Pablo Neruda to mending a dripping tap with Jean-Paul Sartre. Throwing...

Druidism evolved out of the tribal cultures of Britain, Ireland and western France over two thousand years ago. In the seventeenth century it experienced a revival, which has continued to this day. Contemporary Druids can now be found all over the world, and Druidry's appeal lies in its focus on a...

Zionism was a movement of national liberation. It sought to establish a permanent home for the Jewish people where they could attain political independence and instigate a national renaissance. Some Zionists were inspired by a vision of religious redemption and the onset of the messianic age. For...

This is a strikingly inventive and unusual portrait of the most successful English writer for children (until J. K. Rowling), Enid Blyton, who entertained millions worldwide with her myriad adventure stories and mysteries but was herself both an adventure and a mystery. This book is for everyone who...

Home to all the major religions, India is also, inevitably, host to virtually every type of religious fanatic. No other nation has witnessed as much proselytizing or heard as many war cries in the name of God as India. For centuries, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and Muslims have waged bloody wars, sought...

From the author of the award-winning White Fever, Kolyma Diaries is an excursion into one of the world's last remaining badlands, a place full of Gulag ghosts and living wrecks. All along the 2000 kilometres of the Kolyma highway, Bader is plied with vodka. He hears mesmerizing, sometimes devastating,...

The Egyptians created a world of supernatural forces so vivid, powerful and inescapable that controlling one's destiny within it was a constant preoccupation. In life, supernatural forces manifested themselves through misfortune and illness,and after death were faced for eternity in the Otherworld,...

It was September, 1932. Gerasimovka, Western Siberia. Two children are found dead in the forest outside a remote village. Both have been repeatedly stabbed and their bloody bodies are covered in sticky, crimson cranberry juice. Who committed these horrific murders has never been proved, but the elder...

'Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.' David Hume David Hume is generally recognized as the United Kingdom's greatest philosopher, as well as a notable historian and essayist and a central figure of the Enlightenment. Yet his work is delicately poised between scepticism...

Julius Malema has risen to prominence and power with meteoric speed. From impoverished origins in a Limpopo township, he has, before the age of 30, amassed the political and economic power to command the entire youth wing of the ANC, and to own several substantial luxury homes. The sources of his...

Twelve great authors offer their top tips on gardening, from Sylvia Plath's struggles with autumn bulbs, to Pablo Neruda on pruning roses at the end of a romance. In Brecht's mini opera, a courageous mother's fight to protect her tender young potatoes from the army reveals the tragic consequences...

He disappeared. That's all she really knew. In search of her father Andreas, whom she has never met, Lena travels with her small son from Australia to Greece. On the island of Naxos she finds him, a wary, tormented man living in self-imposed exile and haunted by what happened to him under the rule...

As the adults sit down to gossip over a long wedding lunch and the rest of the children rush off to play, a young boy slips out of sight beneath the table. Tommy is twelve years old but his weak heart prevents him from joining his cousins' games, so he sets his MP3 player to record the voices chattering...

Dire Sunday services, shrinking congregations and financial meltdown are the realities of the contemporary Church of England. In this controversial book, Michael Hampson, who worked as a parish priest for thirteen years, examines why the Church of England is in such crisis. He describes a church irreconcilably...