New Zealand author Eleanor Catton has made Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists list.
The literary magazine, whose list has been published every year since 1983, has declared Catton, 37, one of its 20 most significant British novelist aged under 40.
Women dominate the 2023 list which, for the first time, includes international writers who view the UK as home. This includes Catton, who despite bring born in Canada before moving to her mother’s home country – New Zealand – aged six, qualified as British as she now resides in the UK.
Catton, who became the youngest winner of the Booker Prize in 2013 when she won for her novel, The Luminaries, recently toured the UK to talk about her recently published novel, Birnam Wood.
Granta editor Sigrid Rausing described the listed authors as the “9/11 generation”, who grew up affected by the war on terror, the 2008 financial crash and austerity.
The Granta list is a once-in-a-decade landmark, traditionally viewed as a barometer of Britain’s literary landscape.
The inaugural Best of Young British Novelists picks, published in 1983, now read like a who’s who of literary greats. Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Salman Rushdie, Rose Tremain, Ian McKewan and Kazuo Ishiguro were amongst the highlighted young writers.
