The great male novelist is back - or were reports of his death exaggerated?

Pity the poor male novelist.

- Erica Wagner

In recent months there has been a slew of articles with titles such as The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone; and The Vanishing White Male Writer. Jude Cook, a British novelist and critic, announced in March his intention to launch Conduit Books, “focusing initially on male authors”, because he perceived that, in the era of Sally Rooney et al, the boys were being overlooked.

Then comes the Booker longlist, with its 50/50 distribution between the sexes (well, there are six men and seven women, but there’s odd numbers for you); and David Nicholls hanging on to the top spot on the Sunday Times bestseller list for the third consecutive week with his novel You Are Here. It caused the Bookseller to suggest that the “death of the male novelist” had been “greatly exaggerated”. So surely all this fuss about male novelists being oppressed/disregarded/ unable to get their work published isa storm in the bone china.