Book review: Granta 125: After the War, Edited by John Freeman

This collection does not deal with fresh scars but the unfading memories that, decades later, are still seared into a landscape, and a soul.

The best writing approaches the subject matter in surprising ways: Hari Kunzru on a visit to Chernobyl and the sinister lure of disaster tourism in "Stalkers"; Aminatta Forna's discomfort on a family visit to Tehran in 1978 as a teenager and Paul Auster talking to himself – "you" – as a young Jew in postwar New Jersey: "To be accepted by most and yet eyed with suspicion by others."