“This is not an age of miracles. There are no contemporary giants at work in our midst. From the international premier league, the Man Booker shortlist, as reliable a guide as any, could only muster Margaret Atwood. Even in America, to which British readers often look for signs of a new dawn, it is hard to think of a single new novel which, in the past year or so, has registered more than a temporary frisson. Nothing wrong about this, of course. Cultural innovation tends to happen cyclically. The boom of the 1980s and 1990s was bound to be followed by a lull. Perhaps we are in a kind of literary Sargasso sea. It certainly feels that way this week. And yet, looking at the bigger picture, these are momentous years for book publishing.”