An unexpectedly controversial information story hit the guide world final month, regarding the announcement of a new literary publishing house. Ordinarily, such a factor would barely register discover exterior of commerce shops or enthusiastic guide golf equipment, however the launch of Conduit Books prompted a flurry of op-ed pieces across the broadsheets, a lot dialogue on-line – and an uncommon quantity of invective.
It’s because Conduit has a peculiar raison d’etre in that, initially a minimum of, it would solely publish novels written by males. “A modest try”, its mission assertion reads, “to deal with the comparatively current shortage of younger or new male writers within the small world of UK fiction.”
So lowered is the existence of the male novelist in right now’s literary panorama that they have to be inspired again from out of the shadows wherein they’ve presumably been skulking and afforded a notionally secure house. Individuals – and never solely ladies – mocked the thought. Males? Sidelined?! So what’s it like being one of many few male novelists publishing books concerning the male expertise in 2025? As one in all them tells me, “It’s lonely on the market.”
Conduit’s founder, Jude Cook dinner, a novelist and critic, was required to clarify greater than as soon as why he felt there was a necessity for his imprint. “The publishing panorama has modified dramatically over the past 15 years, as a response to the male-dominated scene of earlier generations,” he mentioned just lately, citing such acquainted titans as Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, and Ian McEwan. Whereas Cook dinner was fast to notice {that a} shift in authorial perspective – and gender stability – had been a very long time coming, one consequence, he claimed, is that male authors at the moment are “typically missed”. Therefore Conduit.
Cook dinner is correct. The bestseller lists today comprise novels written predominantly by ladies (Bonnie Garmus, Kate Atkinson, Jennie Godfrey), however after centuries of male cultural supremacy, this could hardly be an issue. Can it?
The literary panorama has, with notable exceptions, virtually at all times been dominated by males: Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck, Philip Roth and John Updike, Kazuo Ishiguro and Julian Barnes. The Nice American Novel was lengthy presumed a largely male affair (Don DeLillo, Tom Wolfe, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen) regardless of there at all times being persuasive proof on the contrary (Anne Tyler, Carol Shields, Donna Tart, Joyce Carol Oates).
Right this moment, a fittingly proportionate quantity of books reshaping that cultural panorama are being written by ladies: Sally Rooney, Elena Ferrante, Patricia Lockwood, Ottessa Moshfegh, Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Analysis into studying habits invariably concludes that ladies learn excess of males do, whereas the publishing trade itself skews feminine, with ladies taking on nearly all of editorial roles. To have extra books representing ladies, then, is sensible.
That mentioned, in a really perfect world (the place few of us reside), there needs to be room for each. We learn within the first place to raised perceive the world round us, and the individuals in it, and so we’d like a panoply of voices, opinions, and views.
There are, after all, a minimum of some males nonetheless writing books about males in 2025. John Niven is one in all them. “Being a middle-aged white man and dealing on this house right now feels, to me, like what it should have felt to have been a poet on the finish of the twentieth century,” Niven tells me, laughing. “It’s a really area of interest, very recherché space, with a tiny viewers. Males simply don’t learn fiction in something like the identical portions they used to, and fewer of us, it appears, are writing it.”
Niven, who’s 58 years outdated and from Ayrshire in Scotland, has printed 10 novels over the previous twenty years. His 2008 debut, Kill Your Friends, was a mercilessly witty satire of the music trade wherein he had beforehand labored, with a facet serving to of serial killing that wouldn’t have been misplaced in American Psycho. His newest, The Fathers, printed this month, follows two Scottish males from very completely different sides of the tracks whose lives merge unexpectedly, and calamitously, the evening their companions are in hospital giving beginning.
A longtime creator, Niven says he has a “small however loyal” following that allows him to maintain writing. But it surely’s completely different for first-timers. He tells me a narrative a few pal – “with a giant public profile” – who printed his first novel a few years in the past. “It was excellent, but it surely was non-genre, and he’s a middle-aged white man, so I did my finest to handle his expectations.”
The novel was turned down by each main writer earlier than ultimately being picked up by a tiny unbiased. The guide, as soon as printed, got here and went, as so many do. “If it had been written by a lady, it could have offered six, seven instances as many as it will definitely did. However that is the place we’re right now.”
In The Observer in 2021, a male literary agent mentioned that at any time when he despatched out a brand new novel to editors, these editors had been virtually at all times feminine. “It’s not the gender make-up that bothers him,” the newspaper reported, “it’s the prevailing groupthink: the dearth of curiosity in male novelists, and the widespread concept that the male voice is problematic.”
Frankness is frowned upon from the male perspective, whereas from the feminine, it’s inspired
David Szalay
Niven’s personal fiction is in some ways a throwback to the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, being, as it’s, scabrous, satirical, and vigorously male. The Nineties specifically had been a fertile floor for such writing, with a bunch of incoming thirtysomething male novelists like James Hawes, Tim Lott, Nick Hornby and, later, Tony Parsons.
However the urge for food for these sorts of novels has now waned significantly. We not crave this specific male gaze, it appears. Hornby continues to publish novels however has diversified into screenwriting – as has Niven – whereas Parsons has turned to style fiction. Correctly so, says Niven. “He writes crime novels now. The final refuge of the scoundrel is the crime novel. And I get it! There’s a definable viewers for crime fiction, however if you happen to’re not writing style fiction, then it’s troublesome on the market.”
From its synopsis, one may count on Niven’s The Fathers to learn like a knockabout comedian novel finest fitted to cursory seashore studying, however there’s appreciable depth and knowledge right here. Its two protagonists negotiate the various strata of male identification and macho bravado, alongside a lingering sense of insecurity and impostor syndrome. It’s terrific. Had it been printed in 1996, it could probably have made fairly the splash. (Nonetheless may, after all. Let’s not jinx issues.) “However the local weather has modified, and I get that,” Niven says. “I don’t know any younger males who learn fiction today. Even I wrestle! I imply, how are you going to compete with screens?”
Earlier this 12 months, the Booker-nominated British-Hungarian writer David Szalay printed his sixth novel, Flesh, which follows the travails of a younger Hungarian, István, over many a long time. István is a monosyllabic man not a lot given to self-expression, a conundrum for these round him. He has a variety of intercourse, but it surely’s unsatisfying, maybe as a result of István gained’t enable himself the vulnerability of emotions. “It’s okay,” he says, again and again, the sturdy and largely silent kind. “I’m okay.”
Flesh is hypnotic in its masculine blankness. It feels uncommon, in 2025, to learn such an unapologetically male novel.
“I used to be interviewed for a newspaper just lately and requested whether or not it was attainable to jot down like Martin Amis any extra,” Szalay tells me from his dwelling in Hungary. Amis, lengthy thought to be the very best prose stylist of his technology, created some significantly memorable male characters, amongst them these with mental pretensions (John Self in 1984’s Cash, a drug-taking hedonist with a factor for prostitutes) or wideboy geezer-types (Keith Expertise in 1989’s London Fields, fond of medication and pornography).
“I mentioned most likely not, and that grew to become the headline,” Szalay says, genuinely put out. “However I suppose I get it. Amis wrote from an totally unashamed male perspective, and that doesn’t actually occur any extra. However I’m not writing for males solely and by no means have. Writing from a male perspective ought to by no means imply that you’re writing only for males, and the identical applies the opposite approach spherical.”
If I do characterize a at present underserved demographic, then I’m simply glad to nonetheless be part of it
John Niven
Once I ask whether or not he ever feels an inclination to mood the behaviour of his male protagonists in step with the present, extra self-aware, local weather, he shakes his head. “To self-censor as a method to conform to some type of thought of what’s acceptable right now can solely make books boring,” he says. “However,” he concedes, “sure, we do appear to be in a local weather now the place, for one cause or one other, that type of frankness is frowned upon from the male perspective, whereas from the feminine, it’s inspired.” Sally Rooney and Miranda July are apt examples of writers whose sexual candour is roundly celebrated.
Szalay sighs. That is troublesome terrain to talk about, and navigating it may really feel problematic. “As you could have most likely guessed by now, I don’t have any type of polemical level to make about this topic,” he says. “I actually attempt to keep a nuanced view.”
As little doubt will Conduit Books. Till we see the primary fruits of their efforts, we proceed to show away from literary males. The lesser-spotted male novelist continues to be on the market someplace, albeit in vastly lowered numbers, and there are nonetheless good books being printed by them, the type every of us may profit from studying. We simply need to go in earnest search of them.
“While you write a novel, you’re providing your slant, your take,” says Niven. “All you are able to do is say: that is how the world winds up for me. And so if I do characterize a at present underserved demographic, then I’m simply glad to nonetheless be part of it.”
‘The Fathers’ by John Niven and ‘Flesh’ by David Szalay are out now
