by Jason Cowley (ed.).
Far better than I initially thought it was going to be.
Oh good grief, I thought when I saw that 58 precious Granta pages had been dedicated to a single essay on the rise of Muslim extremism in the UK, doesn't Granta know this stuff belongs in the London Review of Books? But BBC investigative journalist Richard Watson's piece was surprisingly informative.
Once again, I was concerned about the disproportionate amount of fiction that appears to be creeping into Granta, and I skipped the 22 pages of poetry—please, please, please desist from this irritating new poetry fad, Granta—but the rest was pretty standard (i.e. excellent) Granta stuff.
One piece which particularly grabbed my attention for some reason was Catherine O'Flynn's short essay, The Flawed Cartographer. Oh, and of course there was former Granta editor Ian Jack's tribute to the late Simon Gray. Great stuff.