Granta magazine recently unveiled its Best of Young British Novelists 2013 list. Working with the British Council, Granta showcases, in more than 10 countries, a selection of twenty authors who it deems “will define a generation.” Authors featured on past lists include Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go) and Iain Banks (The Wasp Factory).
The list began in 1983 as a marketing stunt by Granta, which has also released lists for young American novelists since then and, more recently, those writing in Spanish. A new list is created every decade, usually amid some controversy, such as arose in 2003 when writers Monica Ali and Adam Thirlwell were included on the list despite neither having a novel published at the time.
Thirlwell, now author of Kapow! and The Escape, is included on this year’s list, along with Zadie Smith, known for her postcolonial novels White Teeth and On Beauty. Like Smith’s novels, this year’s list reflects contemporary multicultural Britain, with authors such as Bangladeshi-born Tahmima Anam (A Golden War) and Australian Evie Wyld (After the Fire, A Still Small Voice).
Also a first, the list features more female than male authors this year, something that surely will be welcomed by an industry often accused of being male-dominated. The judges were looking for writers who were “fresh and bold – people with a sense of how to tell a story, a sense of the form and how to challenge it”.
The Best of Young British Novelists 2013 are: Naomi Alderman, Tahmima Anam, Ned Beauman, Jenni Fagan, Adam Foulds, Xiaolu Guo, Sarah Hall, Steven Hall, Joanna Kavenna, Benjamin Markovits, Nadifa Mohamed, Helen Oyeyemi, Ross Raisin, Sunjeev Sahota, Taiye Selasi, Kamila Shamsie, Zadie Smith, David Szalay, Adam Thirlwell and Evie Wyld.