As former editor of Granta Magazine, a literary journal known for its international scope, John Freeman has a knack for finding some of the best writers from around the globe. This bi-annual anthology series, edited by Freeman, is always a pleasure to read. The latest edition, featuring “the best new writing on ‘home’” is a provocative, challenging, and extremely rewarding read.

With writers contributing from Israel, Palestine, Romania, China, and Vietnam—to name a few—the content covers displacement, exile, security, safety, loss, love, and much more. The anthology not only features young authors currently making solid strides in the literary world, but also Pulitzer-winners and authors with multiple award-winning books to their name.

Until reading this book, and its two predecessors, I had never come across anything that embraces and connects different cultural ways of expression in such a seamless way. One moment you’re in a backyard in San Joaquin Valley and the next you’re in rural China, picking the eyes out of a fish with chopsticks.

The disconnect is simultaneously jarring and reassuring. What is home? It is many things, to many people.

— Matt J. Simmons