Why do biographies remain so popular? Granta 41 presents a special collection of biographies organized around a single idea - how do you tell the story of a life'. Also in this issue is the exclusive first publication of Saul Bellow's Memoirs of a Bootlegger's Son, James Atlas on Bellow's apprenticeship in Chicago, Andrew Motion on the discovery of Philip Larkin's secret Northumberland hideaway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez on the mysterious Frau Frida whom he first met in Vienna after the war, plus Richard Holmes, Ian Hamilton, Louise Eldrich, Lorna Sage, and Luc Sante amid the police archives of 1914 New York.