What does 'story-teller' suggest? Folk-tales, myths, sea voyages, a cartoon campfire: in short, a way of writing that is distinctly unmodern. Granta 21 presents the work of three authors who are, in their way, distinctly and deliberately unmodern. Bruce Chatwin follows nomads through the Sahara and the Aborigines across Australia, as they sing an entire continent into existence. Ryszard Kapuscinski returns from central Africa with stories - 'felt on the surface of my skin' - to tell people desperate to discover the outside world. And in 'A Story for Aesop', John Berger defines the story-teller: a witness who has become historian, a contemporary who is not modern - detached, sceptical and intensely compassionate.