Women write literary fiction’s big hitters. So where are their prizes? | Stephanie Merritt
The 2017 bestseller list was dominated by women, with Margaret Atwood at the top, but the Booker still favours men
On the face of it, the revelation that female writers dominated the UK literary bestseller lists in 2017 might seem cause for celebration, a long-overdue correction that seems especially welcome in a year that exposed systemic bias in many forms across the creative industries. According to the Bookseller’s analysis of sales, only one man, Haruki Murakami, made it into a top 10 that saw a new generation of female writers, including Sarah Perry, Naomi Alderman and Zadie Smith, displace venerable fixtures of the literary landscape such as Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro.
Related: Kamila Shamsie: let’s have a year of publishing only women – a provocation
Related: Sexism in publishing: 'My novel wasn’t the problem, it was me, Catherine'
