Exit Strategies — John Freeman

Be it a wrong turn, a bad relationship, a debilitating illness or a war, every action creates a reaction, every move is followed by another move. How do we get out of what we've gotten ourselves into? How do we deal with what's been thrust upon us? Granta 118 zooms in close on the phenomenon of the exit strategy.

With award-winning reportage, memoir and fiction, Granta has illuminated the most complex issues of modern life through the refractory light of literature. This issue features new stories by Alice Munro, Susan Minot, Ann Beattie, David Long, and Daniel Alarcon; an excerpt from an upcoming novel by Anne Tyler; new memoir writing by John Barth and Aleksandar Hemon; and many other pieces that examine how we get ourselves out and the repercussions that follow. Hindsight is twenty/twenty, but it's what we do moving forward that defines us and  -- in the best of all worlds  -- redeems us.