Do we really need more male novelists?

There may not be obvious successors to the likes of Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie among today’s hotshot young writers. But is a new publisher dedicated to ‘overlooked’ male voices necessary?

‘Where have all the literary blokes gone?” is a question that has popped up in bookish discussions and op-eds from time to time in recent years. Who are this generation’s hotshot young male novelists, the modern incarnations of the Amis/McEwan/Rushdie crew of the 80s?

The question flared again this week as writer Jude Cook launched a new press, Conduit Books, which plans to focus, at least initially, on publishing male authors.

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