The Thousands

San Francisco and New York are the touchstone cities of American literature, leaving somewhere less fashionable like Chicago out in the wind and rain, despite the fact Hemingway, Eggers and Obama all grew up there. Strangely, Chicago has found an unusual champion in UK lit journal Granta.

The Chris Ware wrap around cover promises much. It’s a real departure for Granta – usually a stodgy academic tome filled with highbrow articles and fiction. Stepping so far out of their comfort zone has resulted in one of their best ever issues. There’s Pulitzer, Booker and Nobel prize winners a-go-go here, riffing on what a cool, corrupt, exciting and downright scary city Chicago can be.**Four of the past eight Illinois governors have been incarcerated. Lake Michigan sometimes gets inexplicable tidal waves. There’s an abandoned underground railway network that flooded in 92, shutting down the entire city. 15,000 people have been murdered there in the last two decades, three times the US body count in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. How did a President emerge from this? Chicago makes Baltimore look like Club Med.