A powerful curiosity is the hallmark of new kind of Indian writing:
important questions about the country's past and present have found
their expression in different forms of non-fiction story-telling that
twenty years ago tended to be preserve of richer societies in the west.
Biography, memoir, narrative history, reportage, the travel account: all
these forms now have their interesting and original practitioners in
India. In this Granta issue they tackle questions ranging from rape in
the paddy fields of Bengal to the end of the Delhi intelligentsia. And
there is room, as always, for the best of India's fiction.