Best of Young British Novelists 5
By Granta
Best of Young British Novelists 5
By Granta
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.
The Young Team
Graeme Armstrong
£9.99 £9.49GRAEME ARMSTRONG is a multi-award winning and Times bestselling author from Airdrie. His teenage years were spent within Scotland’s ‘young team’ gang culture, an experience that features in much of his writing. He writes in Scots dialect. After reading English as an undergraduate, he completed a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Stirling and is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Strathclyde.
The Cellist
Jennifer Atkins
£10.99 £10.44JENNIFER ATKINS was born in London, where she is currently based. Her fiction has been published by the White Review and she has written for the World of Interiors magazine. She writes with elegance and detail, her prose keenly observant and emotionally astute. Her debut novel, The Cellist, was published in 2022.
Seven Steeples
Sara Baume
£11.99 £11.39SARA BAUME is the author of three novels, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, A Line Made by Walking and Seven Steeples, and one book of non-fiction, Handiwork. Baume’s lyrical prose is finely tuned to subtleties of rhythm and cadence. Born in the United Kingdom, she now lives and works on the south coast of Ireland, where she balances writing with her work as a visual artist.
The Coming Bad Days
Sarah Bernstein
£9.99 £9.49SARAH BERNSTEIN is from Montreal, Quebec and lives in the Northwest Highlands. She is the author of Study for Obedient, The Coming Bad Days, and Now Comes the Lightning. Her writing has been called ‘the new millennium’s answer to modernism’.
Assembly: The critically acclaimed debut novel
Natasha Brown
£9.99 £9.49NATASHA BROWN is a British novelist. She was a 2019 London Writers Award recipient, a 2022 Burgess Fellow at the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing, and a Women’s Prize x Good Housekeeping Futures Award finalist. Assembly, her debut novel, presents a biting critique of class and race relations in Britain. Brown’s writing is concise, intellectual and fluid, and reveals the elasticity of the novel form.
Dolores: From one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists
Lauren Aimee Curtis
£8.99 £8.54LAUREN AIMEE CURTIS was born in Sydney in 1988. She is the author of Dolores – shortlisted for the Readings Prize, the UTS Glenda Adams Award and chosen as a New Statesman ‘Book of the Year’. Her writing is melodic, intense and knowing, and is marked by a passion for the peculiar.
The New Life
Tom Crewe
£16.99 £16.14TOM CREWE was born in Middlesbrough in 1989. He has a PhD in nineteenth century British history from the University of Cambridge. Since 2015 he has been an editor at the London Review of Books, to which he has contributed more than thirty essays on politics, art, history and fiction. The New Life, his first novel, was published in January. The book deftly recreates Victorian England in a stylish and richly-textured exploration of sex and social mores.
Children of Paradise: Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023
Camilla Grudova
£14.99CAMILLA GRUDOVA is the author of The Doll’s Alphabet and Children of Paradise. Her anarchic and often inexplicable short stories recall the distorted fairy tale landscapes of Leonora Carrington, Angela Carter and Barbara Comyns, and her novel unfolds in a similarly surreal vein. She lives in Edinburgh.
Cursed Bread: Longlisted for the Women’s Prize
Sophie Mackintosh
£16.99 £16.14SOPHIE MACKINTOSH was born in South Wales in 1988, and is currently based in London. She is the author of novels The Water Cure, Blue Ticket, and Cursed Bread, and her work has been published by the New York Times, Granta, the Stinging Fly and others. The Water Cure was long listed for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Her richly imaginative prose often follows the contours of fables and myths.
Chrysalis
Anna Metcalfe
£14.99 £14.24ANNA METCALFE is a writer and lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. Her story collection Blind Water Pass was published in 2016. Chrysalis, publishing in May 2023, is her first novel. Metcalfe’s writing traffics in suggestion and allusion, and is concerned with ideas of reinvention, identity and obligation.
We Don't Know What We're Doing
Thomas Morris
£9.99 £9.49THOMAS MORRIS was born and raised in Caerphilly, South Wales. His debut story collection We Don’t Know What We’re Doing won Wales Book of the Year, The Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award and a Somerset Maugham Prize. His stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published and anthologised in Zoetrope; Best European Fiction; and The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story. His second book of stories, Open Up, will be published in August 2023. His writing is careful, controlled and observant, capturing the essence of how people, communities and families coalesce.
Losing the Plot
Derek Owusu
£12.99 £12.34DEREK OWUSU is a writer and poet. He is the editor of SAFE: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space, and the author of That Reminds Me – which was awarded the 2020 Desmond Elliot Prize – and Losing the Plot. Associative, experimental and deeply poetic, Owusu’s writing has a delicate edge, lending a lyrical veneer to his poignant fictionalisations of British Ghanaian culture.
Mrs S
K Patrick
£16.99 £16.14K PATRICK is a writer based on the Isle of Lewis. In 2021 they were shortlisted for both the White Review Poetry and Short Story Prize, and in 2020 were runner-up in the Ivan Juritz Prize and the Laura Kinsella Fellowship. Their debut novel, MRS S, will be published June 2023. Relayed in bodily, impressionistic brushstrokes, Patrick’s novel speaks to their sensibilities as a poet: the writing is sensory and tactile, leaning toward intimation and gesture to convey the protagonist’s longing and want.
there are more things: Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and Orwell Prize for Fiction
Yara Rodrigues Fowler
£9.99 £9.49YARA RODRIGUES FOWLER grew up in South London. She is the author of two novels, Stubborn Archivist and there are more things. Stubborn Archivist was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2019, the Desmond Eliot Prize 2019 and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2019; there are more things received the Society of Authors’ John C Lawrence Award 2018 and was shortlisted for the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer’s Award 2020 (both as a work in progress) and shortlisted for the the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022. Her writing displays a commitment to both politics and craft. With each project, Fowler strains against tradition, testing the boundaries of how fiction might be used as a tool for change.
Send Nudes: By the winner of the BBC National Short Story Award 2022
Saba Sams
£9.99 £9.49SABA SAMS is a writer based in London. Send Nudes, her debut collection of short stories, was published in 2022 and was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Granta, the Stinging Fly and the White Review, among others. Her writing is acerbic, empathetic and sharply attuned to the specific shames and pleasures of feminine experience.
Asylum Road
Olivia Sudjic
£9.99 £9.49OLIVIA SUDJIC is the author of Sympathy, which was a finalist for the Salerno European Book Award and the Collyer Bristow Prize, and Exposure, a non- fiction work named an Irish Times, Evening Standard and White Review Book of the Year for 2018. Her second novel, Asylum Road, was published in 2021 and shortlisted for the Encore Award and the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize. Her writing is carefully controlled, evoking the anxieties and pleasures of modern living.
The Liar's Dictionary: A winner of the 2021 Betty Trask Awards
Eley Williams
£9.99 £9.49ELEY WILLIAMS works at Royal Holloway, University of London. Alongside her novel and collection of short fiction, her writing is published in journals and anthologies including Modern Queer Poets, The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story, and Liberating the Canon, with stories and serialised fiction also recently commissioned by BBC Radio 4. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her work displays a roving intelligence, and delights in lexigraphy and the world of words.
2023 Judges
TASH AW is the author of four novels, including The
Harmony Silk Factory and Five Star Billionaire, both
longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His most recent
books are the memoir The Face: Strangers on a Pier
and the novel We, the Survivors. He lives in Paris and
is a regular contributor to Granta.
RACHEL CUSK was included in Granta’s Best of Young
British Novelists issue in 2003. She is the author of the
Outline Trilogy, the memoirs A Life’s Work and Aftermath,
and numerous other works of fiction and non-fiction.
Her most recent publication is Second Place, which was
longlisted for the Booker Prize.
BRIAN DILLON is a critic, teacher and editor. His work
has appeared in Granta, the Guardian, the London Review
of Books, the New York Times, the New Yorker and the New
York Review of Books. He is the author of more than ten
books; his most recent is Affinities. He is director of the
creative writing programme at Queen Mary University
of London.
HELEN OYEYEMI was selected as one of Granta’s Best
of Young British Novelists in 2013. She is the author
of seven novels and a short story collection, What Is
Not Yours Is Not Yours, which won the PEN Open
Book Award. She was a judge of the 2018 International
Booker Prize and the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize.
SIGRID RAUSING is editor and publisher of Granta
magazine and publisher of Granta Books. She is the author
of History, Memory and Identity in Post-Soviet Estonia and the
memoirs Everything is Wonderful and Mayhem.