Granta 113: Issue 113: The Best of Young Spanish Novelists (Granta: The Magazine of New Writing) [Single Issue Magazine]

The chances are that unless you are Spanish speaking, you won't have heard of many, if any, of these writers (I certainly hadn't) as most haven't been published in English before. Granta turns it's focus on Spanish language writers featuring 22 writers under the age of 35 from Spain (7), Argentina (8), Chile (2), Peru (2), Mexico, Uruguay, and Bolivia. If you are used to the magical realism of Latin American writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others, you are in for a bit of a surprise as this is the new generation of writers who, as the introduction notes, have largely grown up in more stable and democratic political times. It's interesting to compare the overall tone with Granta's most recent "best of" collection from young American writers. There, there was an undeniable preponderance of stories on aging and death - the Spanish writers here are generally much more youthful in outlook, generally writing about students and young adults (although Andrés Neuman covers the after effects of a wife's death in his tale of feuding university professors and Sònia Hernández muses on life after an accident that should have resulted in death).

The edition gets off to a cracking start with Lucía Puenzo's Havana-set story full of Latin sexiness and threats of violence. The steam almost comes off the pages. The same might be said of the story by Carlos Yushimito. Santiago Roncagliolo considers the relationship of Latin America with the US while Oliveiro Coelho evocatively portrays the plight of many out of work men in rural Argentina in the extract from his novel. Alberto Olmos considers the alienation of consumer culture in a terrific piece and Elvira Navarro writes of the end of a relationship.

Andrés Barba's short story about a woman with body image issues is highly disturbing, while Rodrigo Hasbún's description of a relationship told poignantly from both sides is innovative and sad. Federico Falco writes of a young achiest's love for a Mormon missionary, For those more used to having to work hard with Latin American writers (I'm thinking of Bola'o amongst others) will be more at home with Pola Olixarac's complex and challenging, but rewarding, Conditions for the Revolution. Mexican writer, Antonio Ortuño's style is also reminiscent of older Central and South American writers, detailing as it does letters and thoughts of a prisoner and his captor although it didn't quite work for me.

While most are short stories, several are extracts from longer works, often in progress, and of these a number have certainly made me want to read more (Javier Montes' The Hotel Life, Alberto Olmos, Andrés Ressia Colino, Matías Néspolo (whose line "Her pupils were like shards of granite sunken in the honey of a pair of magnificent eyes which, despite their colour had not a hint of sweetness about them" is simply beautiful), Alejandro Zambra and Carlos Labbé) so it is to be hoped that these eventually find translation too.

There are inevitably some that work less well for me. Pablo Gutiérrez's long sentences and paragraphs left me cold - more style than content to my taste and Andrés Filipe Solano's extract about two brothers didn't draw me in. I confess that I have no clue about what Samanta Schweblin's fish story is about, but I sort of enjoyed it nevertheless - it's beautifully written but very strange.

Fittingly, the edition is completed by Patrico Pron's story of a struggling writer living literally under a famous author.

Apologies if this reads like a list of names, but as they are not household names to English speaking readers, they are names to watch out for. I'm not sure there's a future Gabriel Garcia Marquez amongst them, but there's no doubt they emerge well from his shadow.

There's an energy, youthfulness and beauty in this collection, which is without exception beautifully translated, that you don't always get with English language writers. It's a treat and most of these have not appeared in English before. Let's hope that changes and that Granta continues to give Spanish writers this level of exposure to an English reading audience. Muchas gracias Granta!

Writers from all over Latin and South America writing in the Spanish language are featured in this excellent collection. I've highlighted four below, but I found I had listed ten of the twenty-two writers featured with the aim of following-up any future translations I may come across. I am not sure I could characterise the kinds of writing found here, in any definitive way, which is surely a good thing. That they are all (relatively) young and have young preoccupations is perhaps their one distinguishing feature, but that is by no means a more interesting fact than the diversity, energy and ambition shown in their writing.

Lucia Puenzo's (from Argentina) short story, Cohiba is a mesmerizingly dark and erotic adventure which starts in a cinema when a beautiful young man sits down next to a very young and naïve girl. It ends two baking-hot days later as the girl, ready to leave the institute, hears the fate of an acquaintance to whom she had introduced Cohiba.

I was moved by Alberto Olmos' (from Spain) excerpt from his novel. It was a situation between husband and wife, between Eva and Diego, seen from the point of view of Eva - a dislocated view of a woman for whom life seems to be slipping out of control. "I told Diego that life's capped. That's what I said, it's capped, and I put my hands over my cup of coffee in the shape of a small roof." One of the shops she passes every day cannot seem to stop mutating: from a shoe shop to an electrical goods shop, a dentist's, a plumbers. And then another large building disappears and she cannot remember what used to be there. Intrigued, hypnotised, by the way things happen, the way everything changes and yet nothing seems to make any real difference. How we just move from one thing to another. Ending on a somehow pleasing note of ambiguity, I wanted more. It seemed to chime with something within me - some dislocation I was feeling too.

Frederico Falco (Argentinian) contributes a short story: In Utah There Are Mountains Too. This impressed me with its insight into a young girl, perhaps twelve or thirteen, who imagines she has fallen in love with a travelling American - a Morman. This was a marvellous piece of character-writing, particularly for a writer who has understood (perhaps remembered?) the strange ability of children to feel deep, intense longing while also cultivating a callous disregard for their own or their loved one's future. How, for children, both love and indifference can exist at almost the same moment.

Another writer I noted down was Alejandro Zambra (from Chile) - again an excerpt from a novel - another child, a boy, who this time experiences the effects of an earthquake, although the family are not left homeless and their part of the city is little-affected. This is more about some of the mysteries that seem to breed within families. He makes friends with an older girl, Claudia (12 to his nine), who inveigles him into spying on her cousin, Raul. They will meet, she tells him, every Thursday and he will give her his report. She is careful to make the concession he needs.

"Afterwards, we will talk for a while about other things, `Because,' she said, `I'm really interested in how you're doing.' I smiled with a satisfaction in which fear and desire also breathed."

I'd better start by coming clean: I don't have much time for fiction. Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoy fiction, but life is too short to read stuff which isn't true.

I am a Granta subscriber. I have been for years. I love it. The non-fiction articles and the photojournalism are excellent. But editions like this which are entirely dedicated to fiction just leave me cold, and make me question whether I should renew my subscription. The whole point of Granta is that is supposed to be a mix of different types of writing.

It might be my imagination, but Granta seems to have been placing more and more emphasis on fiction since Ian Jack stopped being editor. I see this as a very bad move.

Come on, Granta. You can do better than this! Granta 102, for example, was a masterpiece!