The events of September 11 were terrible; their consequences might prove to be more so. But out of them has arisen what might be called the ‘but’ sentiment, as in ‘It was terrible. but the Americans were asking for it/deserved it/should have expected it’. You didn’t have to be on the West Bank or in Kabul to hear it. The same thought was there in British and European newspapers, in the country pubs of Kent, in the bars of Barcelona and Frankfurt. An undertow of feeling was suddenly exposed: anti-Americanism.

Is the US really so disliked? If so, why? Granta has asked twenty distinguished writers across the world to describe how America has affected them - culturally, politically, economically, as citizens, as writers, as children and as adults, for better or worse.