Continuing a series of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, here 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.
Podcast: David Szalay
Ted Hodgkinson & David Szalay
Continuing a series of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, here we bring...
40 years of Granta

The Silkworms
Nothing to see here!

Peace Shall Destroy Many
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?

Blue Sky Days
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?

Vladimir in Love
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?

The Transition
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know? What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?
Ted Hodgkinson
Ted Hodgkinson is the previous online editor at Granta. He was a judge for the 2012 Costa Book Awards’ poetry prize, announced earlier this year. He managed the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Tuscany, the affiliated Gregor Von Rezzori Literary Prize and still serves as an advisor. His stories have appeared in Notes from the Underground and The Mays and his criticism in the Times Literary Supplement. He has an MA in English from Oxford and an MFA from Columbia.
More about the author →David Szalay
David Szalay was one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013. He is the author of the novels London and the South-East, The Innocent and Spring. He lives in Budapest.
More about the author →