‘Working in the familiar mode of the big historical novel’ ... Yaa Gyasi Photograph: Cody Pickens/

The age of anxiety: what does Granta’s best young authors list say about America?

The US is in crisis - what about its literature? Michelle Dean reports on the list of American writers to watch this decade, which is as diverse as the country itself

Michelle Dean
Wednesday 26 April 2017 16.50 BST

I

t is a strange time to be making declarations about the nature of American writing. The country’s not exactly feeling well. And even before the events of last autumn, it used to be easier to know what people meant when they spoke of Great American Novels. They meant, chiefly, fat realist ones, usually authored by men. Philip Roth was the avatar of success in that model. He’d put America in the title, construct his characters around some kind of American archetype, and he was off and running.