Granta 108: Chicago is Granta’s Highest Selling Issue of All Time

recently caught wind of a rumor floating around the Chicago literary community that Granta 108: Chicago was the British literary journal’s highest selling issue of all time. I spoke with Patrick Ryan of Granta to confirm this fact. “I don’t have the numbers,” he said, “but, yes, it was our highest selling issue ever. We’re very happy about it, as you can imagine.”

The Chicago literary community is very happy about it too. The extremely high sales of this issue of Granta, focusing specifically on Chicago authors and essays about Chicago, signifies both that our writers are well renowned and respected in the literary community, and that the literary community in Chicago is booming.

Granta’s 108th issue on Chicago, chosen to feature “a city emerging as a microcosm of America” was released during the fall of 2009. Granta itself has no affiliation with Chicago; it is a British journal originally published in 1889 by students at Cambridge University that focuses on great literature, be it nonfiction, fiction, or poetry.

The Chicago issue features work by some of the Winy City’s most well-known authors, including Alexandar Hemon, Alex Kotlowitz, Nelsen Algren, Sandra Cisneros, and Anne Winters. It features a large photo spread by Camilo Jose Vergara of Chicago’s projects, and essays about Chicago and Chicagoans that paint a haunting, beautiful, nauseating, eye-opening view of our city.

Since this is a review, you’re probably wondering whether or not I’m going to recommend that you read Granta 108: Chicago. The answer yes. Yes. Emphatically, yes.

This journal will change how you view Chicago. These essays will show you the dilapidated projects; the challenges facing immigrants coming here for a better life; the broken heart of a young man as he looks over Lake Michigan, standing alone; the greasy, incestuous political world that runs our city; the muddy soccer fields at Montrose; the creaky pipes that run unknown beneath the Loop. You will see Chicago through the eyes of some of the best written authors you will ever read, and you will be happy to find that almost all of them are from here.

One does not walk into Chicago lightly, nor does one leave without looking back. In this issue of Granta you will discover the City of Big Shoulders like you’ve never seen it. I cannot praise it enough.

Granta 108: Chicago is available for purchase online at Amazon and Powells. I highly recommend that you don’t miss this opportunity to find out what all the buzz in the Midwest is about.