Every ten years, Granta devotes an issue to new American fiction by writers under the age of forty, showcasing the young novelists deemed to be the best of their generation ?? writers of remarkable achievement and promise. In 1997 and 2007 we picked out such luminaries as Edwidge Danticat, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Franzen, Nicole Krauss, Lorrie Moore, Yiyun Li, Karen Russell and Gary Shteyngart. In this special issue, we bring you Granta??s Best of Young American Novelists of 2017: twenty-one outstanding writers, each able to capture the preoccupations of modern America.