Granta #165

148 x 210 mm, 330 pages

London, UK

Editor: Thomas Meaney

Senior designer: Daniela Silva 

Production and design director: Sarah Wasley

From Nobel laureates to debut novelists, international translations to investigative journalism, each themed issue of Granta turns the attention of the world’s best writers on to one aspect of the way we live now. 

This issue, ushering in a new editor in Thomas Meaney, is themed 'Deutschland', offering a shot of new writing from a country whose literary culture has been somewhat on the wane in the post-war years. In his extensive introduction to the issue, which offers a critical look at this decline, Meaney writes:

‘Here is an unspoken scandal: the most economically important country on the continent suffers from both a lack of literary ambition and exposure. Everybody knows the inheritors of the language of Kafka, Brecht and Mann are less widely read today than they have been in decades. One of the enduring mysteries about post-war German writing is why so much of its heavy lifting happened outside of Germany - in Austria, Switzerland, Romania... This issue of Granta collects writing headed full tilt in the opposite direction from the literary lassitude of the land.’