Publisher's Synopsis
Get it, spend it. Save it, lose it. Risk it, win it. Lose it again, get it again: and then give it all away. Pay with it, pay for it, accrue it, defer it, post it, hide it, reveal it, depreciate it, accumulate it: and then give it all away. What is money? An asset or a liability? A measure (of assets and liabilities) or a means (to assets or liabilities)? Everyone - those with it, those without it - has this in common: an interest (compound? simple? calculated annually? above base rate? or just plain sentimental?) in money. But what is it? Granta asked thirteen writers and photographers to say. The peculiar months in the life of which Richard Rayner when, facing the prospect of being without, he did a very simple thing: he became a thief (cheque-books, rare books, the occasional country house). The banality of success: Steve Pyke's portraits of seven rich men (and their secrets). Jonathan Raban's eerie, windswept depiction of the homes of the homesteaders: the consequences of dreaming in America. Plus: a ghost story by Seamus Deane.
