The 2023 Best of Young British Novelists list has just been announced, showcasing a fresh crop of literary talent deemed the best of their generation. Every ten years since 1983, literary magazine Granta announces a list of 20 authors who are named the best British novelists under 40. In the decades since it was launched, the Best of Young British Novelists list has come to be viewed as a barometer of Britain’s literary environment, identifying the writers who will go on to be cornerstones of our culture. Previous iterations of the list have included literary titans such as Martin Amis, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, and Kamila Shamsie.
This year’s list is largely dominated by female writers, with a total of 15 women making the cut, which is stark in comparison to the inaugural 1983 list that featured only six. This shifting demographic could be attributed to the fact that women are now publishing more books than men for the first time in history, according to a recent study by Joel Waldfogel for the National Bureau of Economic Research. The decline in prominence of male authors across the literary board has prompted the announcement that the so-called Literary Bloke of old is dead; long live the Millenial Woman. The New Statesman says that Granta’s 2023 list simply ‘confirms what we already knew: the literary male has become terminally uncool.’
It’s not only women who are dominating the list far more than in previous years though. For the first time, Granta has widened its criteria to not only include British citizens, but also international writers who call this country their home. Eleanor Catton, the youngest person to ever win the Booker prize and New Zealand native, qualified for the list this year as she currently lives in Cambridge. In our post-Brexit era, under an increasingly exclusionary Tory government, this list gives a glimmer of hope that, at least creatively, Britain is opening up its borders. It has to be noted, though, that there are less people of colour featured this year than even in 1983.
The prevalence of white millennial women also serves to only further highlight the absence of arguably the most notable millennial women writer of our generation, Sally Rooney, as she is Irish. This omission of Irish writers in the Granta list seems increasingly more of an oversight every decade, as the resurgence of great Irish writing, along with its impact on the British literary landscape, only grows.
Despite this exclusion, the authors featured represent a vast array of locations that begin to defy the London-centric tradition of our literary environment. Graeme Armstrong, who was born and raised in Airdrie, Scotland, channelled this into his work and wrote his debut novel The Young Team entirely in the Scottish vernacular.
The list also includes K Patrick, who identifies as trans-masculine and is from the Isle of Lewis, who’s debut novel has yet to be published. This reflects Granta’s wish to not only represent those who are already established in their literary careers, but also to identify the literary stars of tomorrow. Whether these predictions will come true is yet to be seen, but achieving a place on this coveted list is certainly a step in the right direction.
The list in full: Graeme Armstrong, Jennifer Atkins, Sara Baume, Sarah Bernstein, Natasha Brown, Eleanor Catton, Lauren Aimee Curtis, Eliza Clark, Tom Crewe, Camilla Grudova, Isabella Hammad, Sophie Mackintosh, Anna Metcalfe, Thomas Morris, Derek Owusu, K Patrick, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Saba Sams, Olivia Sudjic, Eley Williams
Words by Mairead Zielinski