'The pantomime of being self-effacing'

‘There's a paradox as a writer where you're encouraged to put everything of yourself in your books, to take things to the furthest extreme, to hold back nothing. But when you're talking in your own voice, you have to reassure people that you share their values and agree with them about everything and nobody need be perturbed by the content of the book because we're in this consensus about how we see each other and see art. It's not that I think I'm so great but, in England, if you don't go through the pantomime of being self-effacing then you're full of yourself. And I get sick of that.'

Ned Beauman, author of Glow and the youngest of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, in the Independent on Sunday.