Is there such a thing as feminine writing?

Caroline Phillips in The Independent reports from The Hindustan Times Kitab Festival in Delhi.

One topic that has already got feathers flying is the subject of women's writing. For a start, there's the category itself. "Woman writer!" exclaims [Githa] Hariharan. "It's not a terribly useful label if it just becomes lazy, a way to ghettoise." [Deborah] Moggach says: "I don't really like separating women from men novelists. Most female novelists of any calibre are not writing novels that remotely suggest that they're written by women."

Kapoor hotly counters this view: "Of course women's writing is different from men's," says the best-selling author of Difficult Daughters, and professor of English at Delhi University. "It's bound to be. Our experiences are different."