Granta 116

Book excerpt: Ten years later, where are we looking? How do we see things differently? From Ground Zero to Kampala to London to Mumbai, the echoes are still heard, the impact is still felt. The way we interact, the way we travel, our relationship to media and technology, and the very way we regard the world we live in have all been irrevocably changed. Granta 116 will examine the consequences of the attacks that occurred on 11 September 2001 from a global perspective. Rather than recounting where we were when it happened and what we saw, this issue will look at how our lives and viewpoints have been altered since that day. Declan Walsh reports from the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan: breeding ground for Al Qaeda and target of U.S. drone strikes. Elliott Woods travels across the US, talking to recruits, noncombatants and veterans and taking the pulse of a nation a decade at war. Pico Iyer considers what air travel is like in the post-9/11 security state; Nicole Krauss writes a melancholy, impressionistic portrait of family, war, life and death in Paris. Adam Johnson and Nuruddin Farah provide extracts from forthcoming novels: in Johnson's, the 'third mate' on a North Korean fishing trawler listens in on mysterious radio transmissions; in Farah's, a father pleads with a Somali warlord for help finding his runaway son. Showcasing some of the most insightful essayists, fiction writers, poets and visual artists working today, Ten Years Later will explore the complexity of how we regard an event that forever shifted our conceptions of fear, anger and hope.