Sexism among the Bookshelves?

Working on my article about men not reading books by women and a stray thought hit me like a brick.

For years now the nice Mr. Raman has been introducing me to books I've very much enjoyed by authors such as Kundera, Vikram Seth, Bulgakov, Orhan Pamuk, R.K. Narayan and Saramago.

But I can remember only one instance when he recommended a book by a female writer! It was Bharati Mukherjee's The Middleman and Other Stories (shortly before the author came to do a reading) and he said it was incredible that Mukherjee is able to get right inside the mind of a man. Which is true of course.

Raman was not interested in publishing a little piece I wrote for him for his "literary magazine" on A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, despite the fact that it was longlisted for the Booker, I think it's excellent and know that others would enjoy it. (And I was of course giving the piece to him for free!) I wonder if he did not want to take my recommendation seriously because the novel's by a woman and must therefore be fluffy and unsubstantial??

Interesting question - how many women writers does he feature in his lit mag? Take a browse through the archives and tally up.