Granta

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 films, She, a Chinese and Once Upon a Time Proletrian. 'Interim Zone', in the issue, is an excerpt from I Am China, her new novel forthcoming from Chatto & Windus in the UK. Here she spoke to deputy editor Ellah Allfrey about her experience of growing up in rural China, her move to writing in English and becoming an East Ender.

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 time in Hungary paradoxically makes it easier to write about London, his years trying to live off betting on horses and how memory informs his work.

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 excerpt from a forthcoming novel. Here she spoke to deputy editor Ellah Allfrey about her incurable wander-lust, genre-hopping and why Nietzsche was wrong about the ordinary man.

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 Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Here, Alderman speaks to deputy editor Ellah Allfrey about her engagement with the world around her and the joys of writing to genre. ‘Soon and in Our Days’, which is published in the issue, is a new story.

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 speak Italian.

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 online editor Ted Hodgkinson about why living in Peckham makes it easier to write about rural Australia, how memory informs her stories and why she can’t write a novel without at least one shark in it.

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 afterwards.

James Lasdun talks about his most recent memoir, Give Me Everything You Have, about being stalked by a fomer writng student.

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. 

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.