Every 10 years, British literary magazine Granta selects their picks for the best American novelists of their generation. (Access their 1996 picks and 2007 picks on the magazine's website.) It's quite an honor and a career boost for authors to be selected, and we're excited to further explore their latest picks, featured in the new issue, Granta 139: Best Of Young American Novelists.
Below you'll find a list of the authors who were chosen by Granta, with links to their books in our collection. We're already fans of many of these authors, too, and we look forward to reading more of these authors' fiction. We've spotlighted books by these novelists that we have previously featured as staff picks and honored as among the best books of those years.
Jesse Ball: We recommended this exciting Chicago author's The Way Through Doors way back in 2009 on our old website, describing it as a delightful "postmodern Alice in Wonderland for adults...more like a game than a novel," and an "ideal read for dreamers, art students, slackers and doodlers."
Emma Cline: We named The Girls as one of our Top Ten Books of 2016. It's the story of a "14-year-old kid whose parents are going through a painful divorce that leaves her on the outside looking in. Lack of parental attention leads her to a Manson-like cult including some really cool chicks with some really crazy ideas." We also said it "should not be missed."
Lauren Groff: We picked Fates and Furies as one of the best books of fiction in 2015. Of this double-narrative of a marriage, we wrote, "Drawing heavily on Greek mythology and written in rich prose with complex, well-drawn characters, Groff’s Fates and Furies is a clever and ambitious novel."
Yaa Gyasi: We loved Homegoing and named it one of the Best Books of 2016. We said, "Gyasi takes the reader from 18th century Ghana to the American South in the 19th century and finally 20th century Harlem, creating an emotional and insightful read to savor."
Garth Risk Hallberg: We picked City on Fire as one of the best books of 2015 and. We called the debut novel an "incredibly ambitious epic novel" about the "gritty New York of the 1970s."
Karan Mahajan: We named The Association of Small Bombs as one of the best novels of 2016, praising this story of a terrorist bombing in the 1990s in Delhi, India, for showing "how the effects can radiate outward in the lives of people who are affected for decades to come."
Anthony Marra: We praised A Constellation of Vital Phenomena as an "extraordinary debut novel" about the wars in Chechnya. "What unfolds is a heartbreaking story spanning nearly two decades over two wars. Although the characters contend with unsparing devastation, the novel is ultimately hopeful with unexpected humor. Marra weaves multiple narratives into a remarkable novel that, at its core, is about humanity."
Esmé Weijun Wang: Two months ago, we recommended The Border of Paradise. We said this novel about a Polish immigrant family in postwar Brooklyn "employs deft, precise language and impeccably timed shifts in perspective to lend literary weight to her impressive debut novel of isolation and mental illness."
Bookmark our Books page and sign up for our reading recommendations email newsletter to keep up with our current and former staff picks. You won't need to wait a decade to discover some of the best new novelists on the scene.
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