A “20 Best” List To Watch For Given Its Track Record

Granta is naming its “20 Best of Young British Novelists,” an exercise it indulges in every ten years. So what’s the Grant track record? “When you look at the names on the original 1983 and follow-up 1993 lists, the hit-rate was impressive: Amis, Barker, Barnes, Boyd, McEwan, Rushdie, Swift, Tremain on the former; Banks, de Bernières, AL Kennedy, Kureishi, Phillips, Self and Winterson on the latter; with Ishiguro and Mars-Jones, by virtue of their early-flowering promise, on both.”