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← Back to all issuesGranta 81: Best of Young British Novelists 2003
Spring 2003
Who are the best of young British novelists? Five Granta judges read and deliberated. This issue, with new fiction from all twenty writers, was their answer in 2003.
From this Issue
|Granta 81
Dinner with Dr Azad
Monica Ali
‘Six months now since she'd been sent away to London. Every morning before she opened her eyes she thought, if I were the wishing type, I know what I would wish.’
|Granta 81
Gas, Boys, Gas
Andrew O’Hagan
‘The men were quiet. They said nothing for a minute and the sea at my back was calm and almost imaginary, but you could hear the waves coming to wash the chalk cliffs from under us.’
|Granta 81
At The Villa Cockroft
Dan Rhodes
‘In Bosnia, it seemed, a deal was a deal and the Bosnian was ready to pay his rent.’
|Granta 81
Field Study
Rachel Seiffert
‘The bushes grow dense across the top of the drop, but Martin can just see through the leaves: young mother and son, swimming in the pool hollowed out by the waterfall.’
|Granta 81
The Balance
Nicola Barker
‘There were five of them remaining and it was all in the balance.’
|Granta 81
The Clangers
Susan Elderkin
‘Perhaps she'll smile—a big, welcoming smile that invites him to tell her everything.’
|Granta 81
Leading Men
Peter Ho Davies
‘Outside, a technicolour sunset is giving way to the silvery sweep of searchlights, as a hand tugs the blackout curtain across the sky.’
|Granta 81
Look at Me, I’m Beautiful!
Ben Rice
‘When I came back from Gwen's I had expected to find him in the throes of his midlife koisis—you know—trimming an anal fin in the bath, or nursing a slime coat at the very least.’
|Granta 81
Here We Go
David Peace
‘The finance officers read the answers in silence, then returned them to be burned.’
|Granta 81
Martha, Martha
Zadie Smith
‘Outside a plane roared low like some prehistoric bird, Pam shuddered; Martha did not move.’
|Granta 81
The Cyrillic Alphabet
Adam Thirlwell
‘Olga was noble. She was Amazonian. She felt exhausted and humiliated, but she also had force.’
