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Best of Young British Novelists 5

Every ten years, Granta dedicates an issue to the twenty most significant British novelists under forty. Granta is thrilled to announce the fifth generation of the Best of Young British Novelists. This cohort was selected by judges Tash Aw, Rachel Cusk, Brian Dillon, Helen Oyeyemi and Sigrid Rausing.

Congratulations to Graeme Armstrong, Jennifer Atkins, Sara Baume, Sarah Bernstein, Natasha Brown, Eleanor Catton, Eliza Clark, Tom Crewe, Lauren Aimee Curtis, Camilla Grudova, Isabella Hammad, Sophie Mackintosh, Anna Metcalfe, Thomas Morris, Derek Owusu, K Patrick, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Saba Sams, Olivia Sudjic and Eley Williams.

On 27 April 2023, Granta will publish its once-in-a-decade Best of Young British Novelists issue. Subscribe today and be among the first to discover the voices of the next generation of British literature when you read Granta 163: Best of Young British Novelists.

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‘These young writers are the future of literature. Watch. History will prove me right.’ – Bill Buford, Granta editor (1979-95)

 

Explore the history of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists issues, with insights from former editors Bill Buford, Ian Jack and John Freeman, as well as judges A.S. Byatt and Hilary Mantel. To download press materials, including colour author photos and a full press release please visit the press kit page.

Looking Back on Best of Young British Novelists

Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition

On Literary Celebrity

Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips on being chosen as a Best of Young British Novelists in 1993 and the nascent culture of literary celebrity.

Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition

On Judging Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists

A.L. Kennedy

A.L. Kennedy on being chosen for, and judging Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.

Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition

On the Anxieties of Translation

Ned Beauman

Ned Beauman on his translation into Assamese, and where being named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists took him.

2013 Best of Young British Novelists

Fiction | Issue 123

Vipers

Kamila Shamsie

‘Cover your nose and mouth, the order came, swift and useless; if they’d had their turbans they would have wound them around their faces but there were only the balaclavas.’

Fiction | Issue 123

Zephyrs

Jenni Fagan

‘Every step forward causes the road behind him to disappear.’

Fiction | Issue 123 padlock

Boy, Snow, Bird

Helen Oyeyemi

‘I didn’t enclose a note, though there were a few things I’d have liked to say. Restraint is classier.’

2003 Best of Young British Novelists

Fiction | Issue 81

After Caravaggio’s Sacrifice of Isaac

Rachel Cusk

‘It was right after he was born that I started looking at paintings.’

Fiction | Issue 81 padlock

Martha, Martha

Zadie Smith

‘Outside a plane roared low like some prehistoric bird, Pam shuddered; Martha did not move.’

Fiction | Issue 81

Helen and Julia

Sarah Waters

‘She felt exhausted, emptied out; she thought of the day that had passed—it was astonishing to her, that a single set of hours could contain so many separate states of violent feeling.’

1993 Best of Young British Novelists

Fiction | Issue 43

Heavy Weather

Helen Simpson

‘The baby was now three months old, and she had not had more than half an hour alone since his birth in February.’

Fiction | Issue 43 padlock

Failing to Fall

A.L. Kennedy

‘This is the one thing I know from the minute I lift the receiver and slip that voice inside my ear: it will happen.‘

Fiction | Issue 43

The Poetics of Sex

Jeanette Winterson

‘My lover Picasso is going through her Blue Period. In the past her periods have always been red.’

1983 Best of Young British Novelists

Fiction | Issue 7

Blow Your House Down

Pat Barker

‘There was a moment of complete silence, one of those inexplicable, simultaneous pauses in conversation that come over groups of people in a crowded room.’

Fiction | Issue 7

The Summer After the War

Kazuo Ishiguro

‘As it was, my grandfather began helping me to paint without my having to ask him.’

Fiction | Issue 7

The Golden Bough

Salman Rushdie

‘The same face. At every interview the same bland features. It could not be – but it was.’

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