"Recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in humanity." -- British Journal of General Practice. This issue of Granta is dedicated to love, or more often the lack of it, the loss of it, and the search for it. It includes stories about sibling rivalry, about rediscovering parental love, and about the end of marriage and enduring friendship.

The events of September 11 were terrible; their consequences might prove to be more so. But out of them has arisen what might be called the but sentiment, as in It was terrible... but the Americans were asking for it/deserved it/should have expected it. You didn't have to be on the West Bank or in Kabul to hear it. The same thought was there in British and European newspapers, in the country pubs of Kent, in the bars of Barcelona and Frankfurt. An undertow of feeling was suddenly exposed: anti-Americanism. Is the US really so disliked? If so, why?

How do you cope with the great, if you yourself are not so great? Do you speak, do you listen, in the face of every difficulty do you try to please? The sensible thing to do is keep a diary. Irish poet Richard Murphy remembers his experiences with Auden, J.R. Ackerley and Theodore Roethke.

Features articles by: Tim Parks, on the joys of commuting from Verona to Milan every day; Christopher de Bellaigue, on tracking down the Armenians in Turkey; Jeremy Treglown, following in the footsteps of V. S. Pritchett in Spain; Jeremy Seabrook, on being separated from his twin; and, Todd McEwen, on Cary Grant's trousers.

An aphorism: you are what you eat. A second aphorism: the discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a star. A third aphorism: dessert without cheese is like a pretty woman with only one eye. The French philosopher-gourmet Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote all three almost two centuries ago. Like most aphorisms they have the cracked ring of the nearly true. Brillat-Savarin was on surer ground - ground as hard as ungrated Parmesan - when he wrote: The world is nothing without life, and all that lives takes nourishment. So: you are what you eat,...

What is Nadia - living over there in Pakistan - really like? A girl of bangles and perfume and lots of money, forever sitting under a palm tree, drinking yogurt? And what is Nina - living over there in London - really like? A wild animal, a brute hardened by drugs and thieving and massage parlours? And what happens when Nadia and Nina, two half-sisters who have never met, are brought together for the first time? What will Dad make of it, or Wifey, or the Flounder, or the fat ones, Moonie and Gloomie? In his first novella, Hanif Kureishi - author of 'My Beautiful Launderette' - has written the...