Susie Steiner writes: Israeli novelist Meir Shaley, author of The Blue Mountain, seems to have a bee in his bonnet about age, particularly following Kazuo Ishiguro's alleged comment that "novels written after the age of 40 are not really good".
"I started to write at a relatively late age," said Shaley. "I published my first novel at 40 years old."
He returned to this theme at the end of the debate, where he was on stage with Jonathan Coe and Nick Laird. "It has nothing to do with age. I wrote a terrible novel when I was 23 and it was so terrible I threw it away. I didn't even keep a copy."
His latest novel, Four Meals, is the story of a woman and her three lovers, each of whom claim paternity of her son. When it came to inspiration for this novel, however, Shaley made no reference to Kimberley Quinn.
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