Could there really be only one new black male novelist in Britain? | Arifa Akbar

There’s plenty of talent among minority ethnic writers in the UK, but their books rarely make it to the shelves – and that’s shamefulUntil this week, I thought that at least we could be consoled by fiction. That we still had the borderless joys of stories to fend off the dark forces of xenophobia and insularity. Culture is crucial in times of political uncertainty or crisis, and encountering other people’s stories in fiction seems like the surest way to keep our inner, imaginative boundaries open.Except that we’re not encountering other people’s stories because they’re not being published. At least, not in Britain. The novelist Robyn Travis this week gave an inspirational talk on his struggle to find a publisher for his debut novel, Mama Can’t Raise No Man, about prison life and masculinity, and then to fill the 1,300-seater Hackney Empire in London for its launch this autumn. Go Robyn. Less inspiring was the fact that Travis, according to his publisher Crystal Mahey-Morgan, was most likely the only male black debut novelist to have been published in Britain this year. Related: Authors called David more likely to be on bestseller lists than BAME writers Related: Langston Hughes showed me what it meant to be a black writer | Gary Younge Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2016-11-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with: #arifa akbar #political uncertainty #bestseller lists

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