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| Bernardine Evaristo, Lavinia Greenlaw, Niall Griffiths, Val McDermid and Alan Warner discuss which international writers are pressing their literary buttons right now.
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| As a judge for the Man Booker Prize, D. J. Taylor had to read enough novels to sink a literary battleship. Here he talks about his surprise discoveries as he read his way round the UK, from urban strongholds to rural retreats.
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| Welsh literature has a reputation for being lyrical and passionate, inspired by alcohol, sheep and the stunning landscape. Gwyneth Lewis deftly examines the current state of writing from Wales and finds that those enthusiasms may still exist but are being explored in bolder and more inventive ways than ever before.
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| Catriona Ferguson, Literature Matters' canny editor, serves up a generous helping of fresh fiction titles
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| New Writing is the British Council’s annual shop window of new and exciting British writing, including fiction, prose and poetry. Here we are offered an insight into the workings of the latest edition, New Writing 12.
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fiction activities
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| We promote UK fiction of all genres around the world through author workshops, readings and residencies. Read Ali Smith's round up of fiction in 2002/3.
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Unable to help ourselves, we have joined in the literary furore around the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list and have even gone as far as to create our own. With much the same aim as the creators of the original list, we hope that our readers will find some surprises, some familiar names and most importantly, discover some good books.
We at Literature Matters love prizes – especially literary prizes which cherry-pick their way through the best, the brightest and the brainiest of a generation. They cause a stir, get books into the headlines, create fracas and rivalries and give us something to talk about. This year we’ve had fun with the Man Booker (what, no Martin Amis?), enjoyed the Orange (won by an American – again!) and gave a loud hurrah as the deserving Ciaran Carson’s Breaking News won the Forward Poetry Prize for a mesmerising account of Belfast’s imperial past.
But of course the thing that really got everybody talking wasn’t a prize as such – it was Granta’s 2003 Best of Young British Novelists list. To be one of the 20 elite, the writers had to be under 40, published (or about to be) and brilliant, and of course most of them are.
Of course, lists can be invidious and exclusive, divisive and restricting, but we couldn't resist the challenge of coming up with our own list of the best of the rest. We used pretty much the same criteria, and have selected writers under 40 who are from the UK (mostly) and outstanding novelists.
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Diran Adebayo |
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Diran isn’t included in this list just because he is an editor of New Writing 12, but of course this does prove that he is a remarkable editor as well as a dazzling novelist. Diran won the Saga Prize for his first novel, Some Kind of Black, and his second, My Once Upon a Time, is a pacey futuristic take on the crime novel which explores the seedier side of London.
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Rajeev Balasubramanyam |
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Born in Lancashire, Rajeev’s first novel, In Beautiful Disguise, is set in rural Southern India and is centred around a Holly Golightly-type character who sees the movies as an escape from her silent mother and bullying father. Cheeky and irreverent, Rajeev’s novel is a refreshing and original voice in Anglo-Indian fiction.
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Candida Clark |
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All of Candida’s fiction is absorbing, from her first lyrical novel, The Last Look, to The Constant Eye, an intense account of a tortured love affair. However, it was the recent The Mariner’s Star that really turned our heads, a poignant and poetic tale of a grieving woman and her attempts to find redemption.
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Stephan Collishaw
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UK fiction has been accused of parochialism, but with Stephan’s first novel, The Last Girl, he confidently addresses the immense issues facing Lithuanians living in Vilnius during the Second World War. Lots of the biggies are here – love, betrayal, prostitution, anti-Semitism – and all handled with dexterity and flair. Shockingly good, stylistically inventive and emotionally devastating. One of those truly surprising and accomplished first novels.
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Giles Foden |
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A respected journalist as well as a remarkable novelist, Giles’s first book, The Last King of Scotland, is a memorable account of Uganda in the 1970s when Idi Amin ruled supreme. He went on to explore different aspects of African culture in Ladysmith and Zanzibar. An ambitious, intriguing and bold novelist, we particularly admire his brave approach in tackling huge and complex historical issues through his fiction.
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Janet Frame |
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Yes, we know. Not from the UK, certainly not under 40 and hasn’t published anything for 15 years, but we were very sad that this wonderful poet, short-story writer, memoirist and novelist missed out on the Nobel Prize for Literature to the South African writer
J. M. Coetzee. So, to make up for that we have included her as an honourary young talented thing with all the others. And it’s our list so we can do what we want.
[Since Literature Matters was published, Janet Frame has sadly died. However, we believe that she deserves her place in the literary hall of fame so she remains on our list and we hope that by mentioning her here, a few new readers will discover her work.]
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Alex Garland |
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Rumour has it that Alex isn’t writing fiction any more which is extremely disappointing. But there are probably still many out there who haven’t yet squirmed their way through the backpacking search for Utopia in The Beach or bitten their nails through the taut and complex plot of The Tesseract. However, for those that need a new fix, he wrote the script for the recently released zombies-take-over-the-world movie 28 Days Later.
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Niall Griffiths |
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Boisterous, cunning and inventive, Niall has been described as the Welsh answer to Irvine Welsh. With his provocatively titled first novel, Sheepshagger, he brought a very different side of Wales to the world’s attention, one where the romanticised landscape is at odds with the chilling undercurrents of its society. Subsequent novels, including Kelly + Victor and Stump have proved him to be a ferocious and vibrant voice in UK fiction.
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Mark Haddon |
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In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark has written a warm, funny and unusual account of a boy living with Asperger’s syndrome. Extra brownie points are gained as the book has attained the almost impossible – it's been published simultaneously in children's and adult editions.
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Sarah Hall |
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The Lake District has attracted some of the luminaries of English literature and it is through the account of a remote Lakeland community in crisis that Sarah won herself the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Eurasia Region’s First Book Award with her remarkable novel, Haweswater. Sadly she has decamped to the States, but literary chit-chat suggests that she plans to be back in Europe in the not-too-distant future.
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Zoe Heller |
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Another star of Brit lit who has headed to the States, Zoe still writes regularly for the Telegraph so we reckoned her UK credentials are intact. Brilliant at dissecting the malevolent and malicious side of human nature, in the spine-tingling Notes on a Scandal she tackles the taboo subject of a female-teacher/male-pupil relationship.
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Tobias Hill |
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From precious gems (The Love of Stones) to secret codes (The Cryptographer) to the London Underground (Underground) Tobias Hill’s fiction covers a huge range of subjects with confidence, erudition and wisdom. We will try very hard not to hold against him the fact that he is also a prizewinning short-story writer and poet. And as a previous Writer in Residence at London Zoo, we can only assume that he’s kind to animals too.
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Denise Mina |
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Author of the Garnethill series, a trilogy of gritty crime novels set in Glasgow and with a strong psychological bent, Denise’s most recent novel, Sanctum, moves further into the world of psychology and is more a whydunnit than a whodunnit. Carrying a profound sense of place and character, her works linger and disturb in the wee hours.
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Patrick Neate |
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Patrick’s second novel, Twelve Bar Blues, won the Whitbread Best Novel Award in 2001 and is an accomplished and joyful account of family, friendship and the liberating influence of music. The London Pigeon Wars, his next novel, is a witty satire on the failed ambitions of a group of young(ish) Londoners and the liberating influence of pigeons, sort of.
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Courttia Newland |
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Sassy, sexy, and courageous, Courttia’s vivid writing and authentic dialogue have created disquieting accounts of the urban nightmare that some young Black people find themselves living in. See The Scholar and Society Within for further details. His most recent novel, Snakeskin, is a bold reinvention of the traditional detective novel which explores issues around race and class and has earned him comparisons with the master of the genre, Raymond Chandler.
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Maggie O’Farrell |
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We’re not exactly going to pretend that Maggie’s less acclaimed second novel, My Lover’s Lover, doesn’t exist, but in some ways it would be easier to include her were we only to take into account her hypnotic and achingly good first novel, After You’d Gone. We remain convinced of her genius and have high hopes for number three.
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Gwendoline Riley |
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Literary envy is a terrible thing and on reading Riley’s biography in the front of her exquisitely written first novel, Cold Water, (it simply says 'Gwendoline Riley was born in 1979') we managed to overcome our jealousy and include her. Even though the book was published in 2002 which makes her about 12.
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Leone Ross |
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Born in the UK, Leone was raised mainly in Jamaica before returning to the UK, and her work presents influences from both countries. We especially admire her second novel, Orange Laughter, which flits between 1960s Carolina and contemporary New York, using the theme of storytelling to explore prejudice and powerlessness. It is a disturbing, moving, innovative and lyrical account of life on the margins.
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Zoe Strachan |
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Zoe’s first novel, Negative Space, is a melancholy and affecting account of a woman’s attempt to come to terms with her brother’s death. We couldn’t help but be impressed by the careful examination of environment and its effect on individuals as the main character leaves the stresses of Glasgow life to find healing on the Scottish Orkney islands.
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Louise Welsh |
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We’re not deliberately favouring disturbing novels written by women and set in Glasgow, but they do appear to make for a good read. In The Cutting Room, Louise has taken the crime genre, dusted it off, turned it on its head and produced a novel of startling originality that bends and twists its way through a bizarre and erotic plot. And yes, it’s a disturbing novel written by a woman and set in Glasgow.
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