For the fourth time, Granta has come up with a list of what it considers the 'Best of Young British Novelists' -- the twenty most promising novelists under the age of forty.
Not many under review at the complete review (though I have read a few of the others, too, and should be getting to more): just Guo Xiaolu (A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth) and he-was-already-on-the-last-list Adam Thirlwell (The Escape, Politics).
I read way too little contemporary British (or what apparently now passes for British ...) fiction to judge (and, hey, six of these writers have apparently only published a single novel each); the general consensus seems that it's an interesting and solid selection, except that Jon McGregor was robbed (see, for example, Boyd Tonkin in The Independent finding, Achievement, promise and plutocratic whim in Granta's Best of Young British list).
Not many under review at the complete review (though I have read a few of the others, too, and should be getting to more): just Guo Xiaolu (A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth) and he-was-already-on-the-last-list Adam Thirlwell (The Escape, Politics).
I read way too little contemporary British (or what apparently now passes for British ...) fiction to judge (and, hey, six of these writers have apparently only published a single novel each); the general consensus seems that it's an interesting and solid selection, except that Jon McGregor was robbed (see, for example, Boyd Tonkin in The Independent finding, Achievement, promise and plutocratic whim in Granta's Best of Young British list).