Are these young writers the future of British literature – and do they feel ‘British’?
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- 20 Apr 2023
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As Granta publishes its list of the best UK novelists under 40, four nominees (and two veterans) explain their feelings about it all
Few literary talent-spotting exercises have had such an impact as Granta magazine’s “Best of Young British Novelists” lists. Since the inaugural class of 1983, when Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and Martin Amis were the new kids on the block, Granta’s decennial choice of “the 20 most significant British novelists under 40” has garnered serious attention around the world, turning the chosen authors into cultural ambassadors.
But as the British Council begins planning the usual international tours for the novelists on the fifth list, announced last Thursday, one wonders if there really is such a thing as “the British novel” – and, by extension, an identifiable British cultural and literary identity. Does the “British” in “Young British Novelists”, in other words, mean anything more than a landmass these chosen authors happen to share?
Derek Owusu, whose debut novel, That Reminds Me, was published by Merky Books – the imprint founded by the rapper Stormzy – tells me that he’s aware of his British identity all the more keenly, being the son of first-generation Ghanaian immigrants. “When my parents came over [in the 1980s], they were trying hard to assimilate, so they were watching a lot of quintessential British TV. I became obsessed with shows like Only Fools and Horses, Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em, Porridge – the way [the characters] behave and their mannerisms. So much of it accumulates inside you.”
Owusu embraces a more complex idea of Britishness than previous generations. “I talk to older writers like Courttia Newland [born 1973], and he says that when he was coming up, a lot of writers were resistant to the term ‘black British’ – they just wanted to be ‘British’. I think that’s changing. Now, people are OK with being called ‘black British’ – it just means that there’s an extra layer to your identity.”
He sees his work as part of “the black British tradition, following Courttia, Alex Wheatle, Buchi Emecheta, who was on a Granta list [in 1983], Sam Selvon – those people who were archivists of a particular type of working-class life”. As for his own generation of novelists, “where other generations have been obsessed with country, maybe, we are obsessed with identity – and identity politics, which has its good side and its bad side, to be honest.
“I don’t know how long the British book-buying public is going to tolerate this navel-gazing,” he adds, laughing. “But when people look inwards, they’re trying to find things that relate to everybody else. It’s not completely selfish.”
For Owusu, Britishness is “evolving, especially in working-class areas where there’s an amalgamation of different cultures. And it’s creating something new, something beautiful. Whereas in more middle-class areas, where there is less of a mix, their idea of Britishness – ‘Englishness’, I think, is how they would frame it themselves – it stays the same.”
