Since 1979 'Granta' magazine has published many of the world's finest writers tackling some of the world's most important subjects, from intimate human experiences to the large public and political events that have shaped all our lives.
This anthology contains some of the best pieces of fiction, memoir and reportage from the magazine's first twenty-one years - a marvellous diversity that includes the end of the Soviet Union, the origins of Pol Pot, the trouble with the English novel, the tragedy of divorce.
Here you will find the voices of Raymond Carver and Richard Ford, of George Steiner and Isaiah Berlin, of Lorrie Moore and Linda Grant. Jonathan Miller has some fun with chickens, Salman Rushdie writes an angry poem, a Harold Pinter character assesses the proposition that girls like to be spanked.