A powerful curiosity is the hallmark of new kind of Indian writing: important qu
estions about the country's past and present have found their expression in diff
erent forms of non-fiction story-telling that twenty years ago tended to be pres
erve of richer societies in the west. Biography, memoir, narrative history, repo
rtage, the travel account: all these forms now have their interesting and origin
al practitioners in India. In this Granta issue they tackle questions ranging fr
om rape in the paddy fields of Bengal to the end of the Delhi intelligentsia. An
d there is room, as always, for the best of India's fiction.
