Why Fiction Matters: Reading and Understanding Fiction in Contemporary Times

Why Fiction Matters explores how we can understand life better through reading fiction. It includes essays from eminent scholars, young academics and people associated with the publishing industry dealing with different and difficult aspects of reading fiction and understanding life. The essays engage with fictional narratives from English, Indian vernacular and global literatures. The anthology upholds the pluralistic scenario of fiction criticism and the multiple theorizations of narratives in today’s global academy. However, the main aim of this anthology is to re-emphasize and re-explore the ethical content of fiction which often goes unnoticed in the obsessively deconstructionist readings. Precisely, this book is concerned not only with the play of meanings but also with their social relevance and application. Hence, it looks forward to the bridge-building between the academic and non-academic worlds through the act and art of reading fiction. The academic world cannot and should not be isolated from the larger socius, and the academic readers of fiction should not forget their social responsibilities to those whom fiction appropriates in its fold – the illiterate, the marginal, the oppressed.