Granta 8

Dirty Realism is the fiction of a new generation of American authors. They write about the belly-side of contemporary life - a deserted husband, an unwed mother, a car thief, a pickpocket, a drug addict - but they write about it with a disturbing detachment, at times verging on comedy. Understated, ironic, sometimes savage, but insistently compassionate, these stories constitute a new voice in fiction. In this special feature, Granta presents a group of younger authors - many published in Britain for the first time - who, writing in a strange, exaggerated style, have single-handedly revitalized the short story. 'These writers,' Tobias Wolff has observed, 'while not necessarily a school, nevertheless form a new voice. They are able to speak to us about the things that matter.'