GRANTA. Begun as a student literary magazine,...

GRANTA. Begun as a student literary magazine, this high-profile quarterly is now a journal much concerned with the writer’s place in the world. There’s a great deal of reportage by well-known authors, and stories whose implications are generally more social or political than private or formal. Very little poetry finds its way in. There’s generally a good deal of photography, both as document and as illustration. Granta has a tendency to run long excerpts from about-to-be-published books by major authors, and perhaps this isn’t always the most useful thing a quarterly can do. But it also features work that one can’t imagine finding elsewhere, such as the current issue’s dossier on Mario Vargas Llosa’s campaign for the presidency of Peru, with reports by the candidate, his press officer and his political consultant.

Granta, care of Penguin Books USA, 375 Hudson St., N.Y.C., N.Y. 10014; $8.95 per issue, $29.95 for four issues.