Granta 70: Australia

Australia is an improbable country.

Fundamentally-naturally-nowhere else is like it. Superficially-suburbanly-it could be one stop further down a long extension of the London underground or the New York subway.

Is Australia a remote chink of the northern, western world or a part of
Asia? Is it a new version of the USA with European manners ('the
new California'), or a second-hand version of Europe with American
ones? How does it accommodate the fate of its original human
inhabitants, or propose a decent future for them? Why is its head of
state still the British queen? In Australia, two universal, modern
problems are vividly posed. Who are we? What shall we become?

In a year that sees the Sydney Olympics in September, and the
hundredth anniversary of Australian nationhood three months later,
this special 352-page issue of Granta celebrates Australia, as it was
and is, in new fiction, reportage, memoir and photography. With:

Murray Bail

Georgia Blain

Polly Borland

Peter Carey

Peter Conrad

Robyn Davidson

Kate Grenville

Howard Jacobson

Thomas Keneally

David Malouf

David Moore

Frank Moorhouse

Les Murray

Ben Rice

Paul Toohey

Tim Winton