Granta 105: Lost And Found

Alex Clark

Our world is changing at a dizzying pace: our physical environment, our communities and our cultures, how we communicate and the speed with which we adapt to new ways of experiencing and living in the world. Caught in the midst of decline and regeneration, what are we losing and what are we gaining? And how do we decide what's worth saving and what should be thrown away?

In this issue, we travel to places on the cusp of staggering change, talk to people who have seen and done it all and rescue a few choice items from the recycling bin. Elena Lappin journeys to Tel Aviv, Berlin and Prague on the trail of Kafka's missing papers; Karen Wright dissects the impact of the Russian oligarchy on the international art scene; and Maurice Walsh talks to Ireland's priests about how their role in the community is changing beyond recognition. Plus: Tim Adams on his great-grandfather, England's first ever goalkeeper, Rick Gekoski on a lost poem by James Joyce, Elizabeth Pisani back in Tiananmen Square, twenty years on, and Jeremy Treglown excavates Lorca's grave.

From Ireland's Catholic priests - once exported around the world and now under threat even in their own country - to the hitherto obscure music saved from extinction via the vast exchange mart of the Internet, Granta 105 captures moments of both disappearance and rebirth in all their complexity and strangeness.