Granta: The Magazine of New Writing Livres

The family: no relationship is more important, more powerful, or more enduring. Or potentially more destructive. Since the early 1980s, Granta has published fiction, memoir, biography, and reportage inspired by the most important institution in our lives. The best, and at times the most disturbing, pieces are collected here, including “Where He Was: Memories of My Father” by Raymond Carver; “Memoirs of a Bootlegger’s Son” by Saul Bellow; “Sugar Daddy” by Angela Carter; “Ramadan” by Mona Simpson; “Impertinent Daughters” by Doris Lessing; “Family Album” by Mikal Gilmore; “The Names of Women” by Louise Erdrich; and “The Up Escalator” by Bret Easton Ellis.

London at the end of the century comes attached to a new list of marketing superlatives--the most vibrant, the hippest, the coolest of the great global cities: London-New York-Paris-Tokyo. This may amount to no more than a passing coincidence of money, youth, and politics. But for now there is an optimism about London, and the gathering sense of a new London nationalism; the city as a cosmopolitan state.This special issue of Granta, the largest in the magazine's history, is all about London: 352 pages of fiction, reportage, memoir, and photography.