AUDIBLE PRODUCES GRANTA’S CELEBRATED “BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS” COLLECTION IN AUDIO FOR THE FIRST TIME
NEWARK, N.J. – April 16, 2013 – Audible.com and Audible.co.uk today announced the audiobook publication of Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. This new edition of Granta’s influential list of the best British writers under 40 years of age, which has been produced every ten years since 1983, showcases 20 outstanding new works of short fiction, including stories by Zadie Smith, Adam Thirlwell, Helen Oyeyemi and Steven Hall. The full list of chosen authors was announced yesterday evening at a celebration at the British Council in London.
Granta’s Best Young Novelist series is known for identifying the writers who will be read for decades to come. Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, David Mitchell, Ian McEwan and Sarah Waters are just a few of the writers identified by Granta as rising stars before they became household names.
“We are thrilled to be bringing the work of these talented young writers to our rapidly growing audience of listeners,” said Will Lopes, Audible EVP International Operations. “We hope our partnership with Granta will encourage these and other outstanding emerging writers to engage with spoken word from the start of their careers.”
The new authors and stories selected by Granta are
• Naomi Alderman, “Soon and in Our Days”
• Tahmima Anam, “Anwar Gets Everything”
• Ned Beauman, “Glow”
• Jenni Fagan, “Zephyrs”
• Adam Foulds, “A World Intact”
• Xiaolu Guo, “Interim Zone”
• Sarah Hall, “The Reservation”
• Steven Hall, “The End of Endings”
• Joanna Kavenna, “Tomorrow”
• Benjamin Markovits, “You Don’t Have to Live Like This”
• Nadifa Mohamed, “Filsan”
• Helen Oyeyemi, “Boy, Snow, Bird”
• Ross Raisin, “Submersion”
• Sunjeev Sahota, “Arrivals”
• Taiye Selasi, “”Driver”
• Kamila Shamsie, “Vipers”
• Zadie Smith, “Just Right”
• David Szalay, “Europa”
• Adam Thirlwell, “Slow Motion”
• Evie Wyld, “After the Hedland”
Eleven of the writers from the list above read their stories at Audible studios in London and New York; the nine remaining stories were performed by professional narrators.
“I’ve always found it thrilling to hear authors read their own work,” said Granta editor John Freeman. “It gives the voice of their fiction a new depth, pulls it up from the mysterious inner sound we hear as we read and makes it three-dimensional. I’m so pleased this issue of Granta will be our first-ever audiobook, because in many ways these writers are the voice of their generation.”
Audible, the world’s largest seller of digital spoken-word content, invented and commercialized the first digital audio player in 1997, and has since been at the forefront of the explosively growing audiobook download segment. In 2012, Audible members downloaded an average of 18 books over the course of a year.
ABOUT AUDIBLE, INC.
Audible, Inc., an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary (NASDAQ:AMZN), is the leading provider of premium digital spoken audio information and entertainment on the Internet, offering customers a new way to enhance and enrich their lives every day. Audible’s mission is to establish literate listening as a core tool for anyone seeking to be more productive, better informed, or more thoughtfully entertained. Audible content comprises more than 135,000 audio programs from more than 2,700 content providers, including leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers, and business information providers. Audible is also the preeminent provider of spoken-word audio products for Apple’s iTunes® Store.
About Granta
Granta is the quarterly magazine of the best new writing from around the world. Relaunched in 1979 – with ten international editions of the magazine in countries including Brazil, Norway and China – Granta is committed to witnessing the world through stories.
Since 1983, the Best of Young Novelists series has introduced readers to scores of future literary lights long before they became household names, including Salman Rushdie, A.L. Kennedy, Jonathan Franzen and Nicole Krauss. Best of Young British Novelists lists were published in 1983, 1993 and 2003. Best of Young American Novelists were published in 1996 and 2007. In 2010, Granta 113: The Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists was released, marking the first time in history that Granta’s Best of Young Novelists series looked outside the English-speaking world. Granta 121: The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists launched in 2012.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Matthew Thornton
Audible.com
973-820-0402
mthornton@audible.com
Granta magazine
Saskia Vogel
+44 (0) 20 605 1379
svogel@granta.com
