"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.

This new edition collects a dozen of the finest pieces of reportage "Granta" has published. Featuring distinguished writers and reporters such as James Fenton, Martha Gellhorn, Ryszard Kapuscinski, John le Carre, Joseph Lelyveld and Marilynne Robinson, as well as such new talents as Suketu Mehta and Wendell Steavenson, the book covers some of the signal events of our time: the fall of Saigon, the massacre in Tiananmen Square, and the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq.

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.