If we carry on like this I don’t think we’ll find the next Philip Roth. We won’t even find the next Larry David,” says Oli Malcolm.
The former HarperCollins publisher who has 15-plus Sunday Times bestsellers to his name is explaining why the newly launched High Line Publishing Studio which he heads is essential in providing a safe home for Jewish and Israeli writers.
It was launched by literary agent Neil Blair as an antidote to monoculture, and the increasing marginalisation of Israeli and Jewish authors since October 7 in mainstream publishing. Perhaps the final straw for Blair was when former hostage Eli Sharabi’s autobiography Hostage failed to find a single mainstream British publisher.
In the event, the smaller Swift Press stepped forward and more than a quarter of a million copies of Hostage have now been sold. “It’s almost like we’re willing to thwart our own commerce to not be supportive of this type of book,” says Malcolm.
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