Beyond seeing a couple of his novels in the shops, I had no prior knowledge of David Szalay’s work. In all honesty, his Granta piece, ‘Europa’, did nothing for me. It tells of three people who travel from Hungary to London for a job which remains unspecified, at least at first – but the strong sense is that it’s not going to be something of which the mother we meet in the opening scene would approve. I don’t really know what else to say, because I never felt as though I got any purchase on ‘Europa’. Maybe it will fare better in the context of an entire work, but it doesn’t seem to stand alone well.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.