The Picador Book of 40

For Picador’s 40th anniversary we asked 40 writers to respond to the idea of 40 in whatever way they liked. The results are spectacular: thoughtful, funny, poignant, as brilliantly diverse as the Picador list.

Pieces include the temporal (what I was doing 40 years ago; the mid-life crisis of a 40-year-old whose lifespan coincides with Picador’s), the quirky (gifts I’d...