Can Fiction Teach Us How to Live in a World Full of Suffering?
Reading and Writing Can Help Us Understand the Difficult Past and Imagine Better Futures
Any work of fiction is an investigation of aftermath, borne of the world that has already occurred. Fiction offers readers as well as writers the possibility to explore past transgressions and raise complex ethical and intellectual questions about responsibility—and culpability, guilt, betrayal, and remorse.
Patrick Modiano’s The Occupation Trilogy, J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise are three works that dig deeply into these inquiries and grapple with the sins of empire. Each asks: What forces shape the present moment? Who bears responsibility for the suffering and inhumanities of …
