Twice before - in 1983 and 1993 - Granta has chosen twenty writers under forty whose writing represents the best promise or achievement in British fiction. Twenty years ago that list included Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift, Pat Barker. Who are their equivalents today? Granta's panel of judges will announce its answer in January 2003. Previous experience suggests it might be controversial, but there will be no more definitive selection than Granta's. 1983 Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Julian Barnes, Ursula Bentley, William Boyd, Buchi Emecheta, Maggie Gee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alan Judd, Adam Mars-Jones, Ian McEwan, Shiva Naipaul, Philip Norman, Christopher Priest, Salman Rushdie, Lisa St Aubin de Teran, Clive Sinclair, Graham Swift, Rose Tremain, A. N. Wilson 1993 Iain Banks, Louis de Bernieres, Anne Billson, Tibor Fischer, Esther Freud, Alan Hollinghurst, Kazuo Ishiguro, A.L. Kennedy, Philip Kerr, Hanif Kureishi, Adam Lively, Adam Mars-Jones, Candia McWilliam, Lawrence Norfolk, Ben Okri, Caryl Phillips, Will Self, Nicholas Shakespeare, Helen Simpson, Jeanette Winterso