Granta 88: Mothers: The Magazine of New Writing — Ian Jack

Ma, mummy, mom, mere, mataji, madre, mutter, mamma mia!

Â'What made her uncertain were the proper boundaries between children and adults, love and sex, work and play. What bewildered her were her children.'
 -- Edmund White, Â'The Merry Widow'

Â'My mother spoke to me of heaven as concretely and with as much love as she named the wild flowers. It was her prayer and fervent hope that we would all live there together in happiness with God for all eternity.'
 -- John McGahern, Â'The Lanes to Heaven'

And:
Ian McEwan on a visit to mother
Alexandra Fuller gives birth in Zambia
Paul Theroux on a wicked old mother
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on trying to oblige mother with a man
Masha Gessen on her mother's mutant gene -- and her own
Richard Beard on the moment the mother-in-law joke is no longer funny

Plus Jim Lewis on the art of falling asleep, Ryszard Kapuscinski on his experience in the Second World War, and a photo essay on things plucked from the streets of New York by one of its greatest reporters, Joseph Mitchell.