Granta has selected the next decade’s British novelists under-40 to watch.
Some are expected; some might not be.
Have a look here:
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
Evie Wyld
…see more here . . . .http://www.granta.com/Archive/123
– and here too . . . http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s0f63
I wonder how useful it might be to read the Granta selection in the light of Zadie Smith’s ‘two paths for the novel’ thesis?
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/nov/20/two-paths-for-the-novel/?pagination=false
Here’s my review of Granta’s Best Young Americans 2007:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/fictionreviews/3664926/Sick-of-this-dream-country.html
It’s interesting, in contrast to what you wrote about the Americans, how few overt references to ‘Britain’ pop up in this year’s collection. I counted only two – but doubted my number immediately on completion. It’s also interesting – and my spotting of this isn’t particularly novel – how few of the stories were actually set in Britain at all.
This is quite a nice article on the authors in the New York Times, with concerns connected to Gish Jen’s article linked on our thread on Graham Huggan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/books/granta-best-of-young-british-novelists-ranges-wide.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0