Granta 7

Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #7

by Bill Buford (Editor), Clive Sinclair (Contributor), Graham Swift (Contributor)

Reissuse of volume 2 of Best of Young British Novelists in the run up to the latest volume.


Originally published in 1983. Features the work of Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Julian Barnes, Ursula Bently, William Boyd, Buchi Emecheta, Maggie Gee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alan Judd, Adam Mars-Jones, Ian McEwan, Shiva Naipaul, Philip Norman, Christopher Priest, Salman Rushdie, Lisa St. Aubin de Teran, Clive Sinclair, Graham Swift, Rose Tremain, and A.N. Wilson.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

320 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1983

About the author

William Holmes Buford is an American author and journalist. He is the author of the books Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. Buford was previously the fiction editor for The New Yorker, where he is still on staff. For sixteen years, he was the editor of Granta, which he relaunched in 1979. He is also credited with coining the term "dirty realism".

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly, having picked out Ian McEwan, William Boyd, Julian Barnes and Pat Barker before they were famous, the track record of Bill Bruford and the other judges who compiled the list of authors whose works appear here is pretty much unassailable. It was a real pleasure to read the excerpts from Martin Amis' Money and Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot (here under the title 'Emma Bovary's Eyes') - both of which crackle and sparkle (respectively) as much as they did in 1983. For me William Boyd's - one of my favourite authors - piece here was rather uneven; but then, arguably, his early works *were* somewhat uneven - he only really started to hit his stride critically and commercially in the 1990s.

The real highlights for me came not from the big-name (now) authors but from two writers that I hadn't heard of: Lisa St Aubin De Terán, whose 'The Five Of Us' is excerpted from her book The Slow Train To Milan. I found this piece enthralling and have subsequently read that book and two others - she is perhaps my literary discovery of the year. I also loved Christopher Priest's The Miraculous Cairn which was a quirky and, frankly, arousing story with a fantastic twist that I did not see coming.

All in all, a great way of finding a new author to read - even if they were first new in 1983!

[Chris]

Actually, I read only four stories. Interesting that most of these Best of Young British Novelists from 1983 haven't made more of a name for themselves (at least in my awareness). The names I recognize are from the men in the collection, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Graham Swift. I decided I would start by reading the women in the collection. Buchi Emecheta, writes of a schoolgirl steeped in her own culture, but educated in another, and knowing, or perhaps not, that neither are entirely her.
Maggie Gee, in Rose on the broken, writes in a fragmented style that is so fresh, the unusual cadence challenging the reader, but obscuring the meaning. I want to read more Maggie Gee.
Pat Barker's excerpt from her novel, "Blow Your House Down" is about sex workers in an industrial town where sex workers are being murdered.
Ursula Bentley's story too, features a predator on the loose. The women writing this collection (that I've read so far) all confront the the dangerous and degrading sexism of society. Certainly, it's necessary writing to commit, before one moves on to other topics. Why have I never heard more from the women in this "Best of" collection?
Bentley makes references to New England and specific locations in the Greater Boston area that peaked my personal interest. I love the antiquated I love the look of this issue, with grainy black and white photos of each artist on the title page of their story.
I hope to read the other stories at a later time.
12/2/18-I read Martin Amis' "Money" today. A well-written story with a disagreeable storyline and unappealing characters. The 1980s New York scene was pretty dated, interestingly so.

[Chazzbot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in 1983, this anthology "collects new fiction from the twenty writers judged to be the best of their generation." The author roster is impressive and Granta's assessment has stood the test of time. Among the authors here are Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, and Graham Swift.

Somewhat perversely, my favorite selections here were mainly written by the authors with whom I was less familiar: Buchi Emecheta, Maggie Gee, Alan Judd, Adam Mars-Jones, Shiva Naipaul, Christopher Priest, Rose Tremain, and A.N. Wilson.

This is a wide and varied collection of fine authors, and I can't imagine anyone would not find something (or several somethings) enjoyable and enlightening in this early issue of the noted British literary magazine.

[George Mavronisiotis · Rating 4 out of 5]

must read:

The summer after the war - Kazuo Ishiguro

The golden bough - Salman Rushdie

[Peter Coomber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic! This book I bought in the early Eighties when I was keen to be a novelist (and didn't this book contain stories by young British novelists?) and me being young and British too...

I never read it.

I'm glad I never read it then - it would have ruined me.

But now...

Most of these young British novelists, having been born in the years just after the Second World War, will now be old (some possibly no longer with us - I haven't looked; I'm not that ghoulish), and I - being old but not as old - and still wanting to be a novelist (or a writer of some sort) have finally got around to reading their stories.

Fantastic! (even though the book-binding glue disintegrated, and the pages fell out.)