BOOKS

Death of the celebrity novelist: what the Granta list tells us about fiction

The new list of the best ‘Twenty Under Forty’ British writers is perfectly decent, but it’s a far cry from the glamour and sizzle of 1983, says Robbie Millen

Five of Granta’s best young British novelists to watch: Isabella Hammad, Natasha Brown, Tom Crewe, Eleanor Catton and Sophie Mackintosh
Five of Granta’s best young British novelists to watch: Isabella Hammad, Natasha Brown, Tom Crewe, Eleanor Catton and Sophie Mackintosh
The Times

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There was a moment when novelists were sexy. Martin Amis — phwoarrrr! Rose Tremain — yes, yes, yes! Ian McEwan — woof! It’s hard to believe but it’s true: the reading public had a thing for round-shouldered intellectuals in corduroy jackets. We wanted to read about them in gossip columns, we wanted to know what pencils they used, we wanted to know their Important Views on Urgent Topics.

That moment of peak literary sexiness came in 1983 with the launch of the “Twenty Under Forty”, the Best of Young British Novelists, and an extraordinary photograph of them looking haughty and unimpressed, like a seen-it-all supergroup. The lowly book reviewer John Walsh, later a boisterous literary editor of The Sunday Times, was there to see the