Zadie Smith: ‘I don’t know when I read men any more’

At a talk on her latest essay collection, Dead and Alive, Smith said she ‘sometimes’ reads male novelists, but more often seeks the wisdom of older female writers like Helen Garner “I don’t know when I read men any more”, the writer Zadie Smith told a literary festival audience on Sunday. “It does happen sometimes, but it’s completely flipped compared to the reading I did when I was young,” she continued. Smith – the author of novels including White Teeth and On Beauty – was speaking at the Arts theatre, Cambridge during an event at Cambridge literary festival about her latest book, the essay collection Dead and Alive, in which she discusses a number of female artists, among other subjects. Asked whether the author was referring to the “much-discussed ‘death of the male novelist’” by host and Observer literary editor Tom Gatti, Smith said: “No, I have read some really good ones recently, actually by millennial men, really fascinating, balls-to-the-wall novels – I think they’ve got nothing to lose so they’re like, ‘let’s do this’.” Last year, Smith also listed Flesh by David Szalay among her holiday reading recommendations for the Guardian

Apr 27, 2026 → Apr 27, 2026