The final in our series of podcasts featuring the Best of Young British Novelists 4, we hear from Tahmima Anam. Anam is the author of the Bengal Trilogy, which chronicles three generations of the Haque family from the Bangladesh war of independence to the present day. Her debut novel, A Golden Age, was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. It was followed in 2011 by The Good Muslim. ‘Anwar Gets Everything’, in the issue, is an excerpt from the final instalment of the trilo...
Jun 03, 2013•26 min•Ep. 64
Continuing our series of podcasts on the Best of Young British Novelists 4, we hear from Steven Hall. Born in Derbyshire, Hall’s first novel, The Raw Shark Texts, won the Borders Original Voices Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and has been translated into twenty-nine languages. ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’, in the issue, are excerpts from his upcoming second novel, The End of Endings. Here he spoke to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about how the internet is, to his mind, disturbing the possibility ...
May 31, 2013•41 min•Ep. 63
Continuing our series of podcasts on the Best of Young British Novelists 4, we hear from Jenni Fagan. Fagan’s critically acclaimed debut novel, The Panopticon, was published in 2012 and named one of the Waterstones Eleven, a selection of the best fiction debuts of the year. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her collection The Dead Queen of Bohemia was named 3:AM magazine’s Poetry Book of the Year. She holds an MA in creative writing from Royal Holloway, University of London,...
May 23, 2013•26 min•Ep. 62
Continuing our Best of Young British Novelists we hear from Kamila Shamsie. Shamsie is the author of five novels. The first, In the City by the Sea, was published by Granta Books in 1998 and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her most recent novel, Burnt Shadows, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and translated into more than twenty languages. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a trustee of English PEN and a member of the Authors Cricket Club. ‘Vipers’...
May 23, 2013•22 min•Ep. 61
Ross Raisin’s first novel, God’s Own Country, about a disturbed adolescent living in the Yorkshire Dales, won him the 2009 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Guardian First Book Award, a Betty Trask Award and numerous other prizes. His second novel, Waterline, about a former shipbuilder grieving the death of his wife in Glasgow, was published to critical acclaim in 2011. His short stories have been published in Prospect, Esquire, Dazed & Confused, the Sunday Times, on BBC Radio...
May 22, 2013•20 min•Ep. 60
Continuing a series of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, today we bring you an interview with Nadifa Mohamed. Mohamed was born in Somalia and moved to Britain in 1986. Here she spoke to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about how her first novel, Black Mamba Boy (which won the Betty Trask Award), was inspired by her father’s journey to the UK from Somalia, and how that process brought them closer together. They also spoke about her arrival from Somalia, growing up in Tooting and...
May 22, 2013•32 min•Ep. 59
Continuing a series of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, today we bring you an interview with Sunjeev Sahota. Sahota was born in Derby and currently lives in Leeds with his wife and daughter. His first novel, Ours are the Streets, was published in 2011. ‘Arrivals’, in the issue, is an excerpt from The Year of the Runaways, his unfinished second novel, forthcoming from Picador. Here Sahota spoke to Ellah Allfrey about his work, finding Midnight’s Children in an airport books...
May 21, 2013•23 min•Ep. 58
Benjamin Markovits is the author of six books: The Syme Papers, Either Side of Winter and Playing Days as well as a trilogy on the life of Lord Byron — Imposture, A Quiet Adjustment, and Childish Loves. He is also the only Granta Best of Young Novelists who is known to be able to dunk. In this podcast with Yuka Igarashi, he discusses his time playing minor-league basketball for a team in southern Germany, and the ways in which this and his other experiences inform his work as a writer. He also t...
May 21, 2013•31 min•Ep. 57
In our latest instalment of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, we speak to Helen Oyeyemi. Oyeyemi is the author of The Icarus Girl and The Opposite House. Her third novel, White is for Witching, was awarded a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award, and her fourth, Mr Fox, won the 2012 Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Award. ‘Boy, Snow, Bird’, in the issue, is an excerpt from a new novel of the same title, published in 2014 by Picador in the UK and Riverhead in the US. Here ...
May 20, 2013•34 min•Ep. 56
Our latest instalment of podcasts for our Best of Young British Novelist features Adam Thirlwell. Thirlwell is the author of the novels Politics and The Escape, the novella Kapow!, and a project with international novels that includes an essay-book, Miss Herbert and a compendium of translations edited for McSweeney’s. He was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists back in 2003. Here she spoke to Granta’s Yuka Igarashi about sex, history, translation, using tempo in novels and...
May 17, 2013•34 min•Ep. 55
In our latest installment of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, we speak to Sarah Hall. Hall was born in Cumbria and lives in Norwich. She is the multiple-prize-winning author of four novels: Haweswater, The Electric Michelangelo, The Carhullan Army (published in the US as Daughters of the North) and How to Paint a Dead Man; a collection of short stories, The Beautiful Indifference, original radio dramas and poetry. Here she spoke to Granta’s Saskia Vogel about wolves, tatto...
May 16, 2013•36 min•Ep. 54
Continuing a series of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, today we bring you an interview with Xiaolu Guo. Guo studied at the Beijing Film Academy and received her MA from the National Film School in London. She has published seven novels in both English and Chinese. A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her other novels include UFO in Her Eyes and 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth. She directed the award-winning fil...
May 13, 2013•32 min•Ep. 53
Continuing a series of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, today we bring you an interview with David Szalay. Szalay was born in Canada; his family moved to the UK soon after, and he has lived here ever since. He has published three novels: London and the South-East, The Innocent and Spring. He is currently working on a number of new projects –‘Europa’, which appears in the issue, is an excerpt from one of these. He spoke to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about how spending tim...
May 08, 2013•41 min•Ep. 52
Continuing a series of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, today we bring you an interview with Joanna Kavenna. Kavenna grew up in various parts of Britain and has also lived in the US, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States. She is the author of three novels: Inglorious, The Birth of Love and Come to the Edge, and one work of non-fiction, The Ice Museum. In 2008 she was awarded the Orange Prize for New Writing. ‘Tomorrow’, which appears in the issue, is an excerp...
May 07, 2013•25 min•Ep. 51
In the latest Granta Podcast we bring you an interview with Best of Young British Novelist, Naomi Alderman. Described by Rachel Seiffert as ‘someone who can do funny’, Alderman is the author of three novels: Disobedience, The Lessons and The Liars’ Gospel. She writes and designs computer games and is co-creator of Zombies, Run!, the best-selling iPhone fitness game and audio adventure. A professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University, she has been paired with Margaret Atwood in the Rolex M...
Apr 29, 2013•31 min•Ep. 50
Continuing a series of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, today we bring you an interview with Taiye Selasi. Selasi was born in London to Nigerian and Ghanaian parents. She made her fiction debut in Granta in 2011 with ‘The Sex Lives of African Girls’, which was selected for Best American Short Stories in 2012. Her first novel, Ghana Must Go, was published in March 2013. Here she spoke to deputy editor Ellah Allfrey about her mother’s garden, Rachmaninov and learning to spea...
Apr 23, 2013•25 min•Ep. 49
Continuing a series of podcasts on our Best of Young British Novelists 4, today we bring you an interview with Evie Wyld. Wyld’s first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, which follows the lives of two men, Frank and Leon, who live decades apart but on the same wild coastline in Queensland, Australia, and was shortlisted for numerous awards and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award. Her second novel All the Birds, Singing, is excerpted in the issue. Here Wyld talks to...
Apr 18, 2013•44 min•Ep. 48
Best of Young British Novelist Adam Foulds, the author of two novels including Booker shortlisted The Quickening Maze and the Costa Book Award winning narrative poem The Broken Word, spoke to John Freeman about how he wanted to be a scientist before discovering writing, his time working in a warehouse as a forklift truck driver, why his work often focuses on moments of existential crisis and the English teachers who encouraged his writing and were surprised to receive a hefty manuscript shortly ...
Apr 16, 2013•45 min•Ep. 47
James Lasdun talks about his most recent memoir, Give Me Everything You Have, about being stalked by a fomer writng student.
Feb 27, 2013•30 min•Ep. 46
Colin Robinson reads from his memoir 'Paddleball' in Granta 122: Betrayal and discusses how an old brotherly friction re-emerged during a game in New York, and how gym culture has changed the way we see our bodies.
Jan 28, 2013•36 min•Ep. 45
The author of 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist', Mohsin Hamid, talks to John Freeman about the extract from his latest novel 'How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia', extracted in the new issue of Granta, Betrayal.
Jan 16, 2013•43 min•Ep. 44
Granta New Poet Sean Borodale discusses his debut collection Bee Journal, shortlisted for he TS Eliot prize, with online editor Ted Hodgkinson.
Dec 07, 2012•47 min•Ep. 43
Robert Olen Butler reads his story 'Banyan' and talks to Ted Hodgkinson about how memory can be like compost and why every story is a search for an identity.
Dec 07, 2012•48 min•Ep. 42
Michel Laub reads from his story in Best of Young Brazilian Novelists and discusses trespassing and fathers.
Dec 03, 2012•24 min•Ep. 41
Best of Young Brazilian Novelist Vinicius Jatobá and his translator Jethro Soutar on the challenges and intimacy of translation.
Nov 28, 2012•34 min•Ep. 40
Deborah Levy spoke to Ted Hodgkinson about being shortlisted for the Booker Prize for her novel, Swimming Home.
Oct 19, 2012•43 min•Ep. 39
Alison Moore talks to John Freeman about her debut novel, The Lighthouse, which was shortlisted for the Man Booke Prize.
Oct 18, 2012•19 min•Ep. 38
Jeet Thayil talks to Ted Hodgkinson abot his Booker shortisted novel, Narcopolis.
Oct 17, 2012•35 min•Ep. 37
Booker shortlisted author Tan Twan Eng talks to John Freeman about The Garden of Eveing Mists.
Oct 16, 2012•26 min•Ep. 36
D.T. Max on his biography: 'Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace'.
Oct 08, 2012•51 min•Ep. 35
