Why Fiction Matters

"I don't read fiction."

It's a sentence I've heard more times than I can count. Usually it comes up over dinner or at a business meeting when the conversation turns to books. Someone mentions they're reading a biography or a book on investing or politics. Then, almost proudly, they add, "I only read nonfiction. I want to learn something."

The implication is always the same. Fiction is entertainment. Nonfiction is education.

For a long time, I struggled to explain why I disagreed. Not because I don't value nonfiction, I do. Some of the most important books I've read have been written by historians, economists, psychologists and journalists. If I want to understand monetary policy, I'll read economists. If I want to learn about behavioural science, I'll read psychologists. There are questions that only nonfiction can answer well.

But the older I get, the more I realise that facts alone don't teach us how to navigate the world. They tell us what happened. They explain systems and theories. They give us evidence and arguments. What they often can't do is immerse us in the messy, emotional reality of being human.

That's where fiction comes in.

The best novels don't distract us from reality. They distil it. They take the complexities of our world and place them in one that's just unfamiliar enough for us to see those complexities more clearly. A fantasy kingdom isn't really about magic. It's about power. A dystopian society isn't really about the future. It's about the present. A fictional family isn't just one family. It's every family trying to survive love, loss, expectation and change.

Stories have a way of making abstract ideas personal. Reading about propaganda in a political science textbook teaches you how it works. Watching a character slowly fall victim to it makes you understand why it works. Learning about authoritarianism is one thing. Living through it alongside fictional characters, feeling their fear, their hope and the impossible choices they're forced to make, is another entirely.

That is what fiction does so well. It asks us not just to understand ideas but to experience them.

It also asks something far more difficult of us than many nonfiction books ever do. It asks us to sit with uncertainty. To understand people we don't agree with. To empathise with characters whose decisions frustrate us. To recognise that most villains don't believe they're villains and that most heroes are deeply flawed. It reminds us that people are rarely as simple as we'd like them to be.

Perhaps that's why stories have endured for thousands of years. Long before we had research papers or podcasts or TED Talks, we had myths, epics and novels. Human beings have always used stories to make sense of the world because stories don't just communicate information. They communicate experience.

I don't think fiction makes us smarter because it gives us more facts. I think it makes us wiser because it gives us more perspectives. It expands our emotional vocabulary. It strengthens our ability to imagine lives unlike our own. It teaches empathy without ever calling it empathy. It develops critical thinking by asking us to question narrators, motives and systems rather than simply accepting them.

This series is my attempt to explore that idea.

Every month, I'll be choosing two works of fiction, usually fantasy or literary fiction, and discussing the very real lessons they offer about politics, relationships, leadership, grief, ambition, morality and everything else that makes us human. Not because I believe fiction is better than nonfiction, but because I think we've underestimated what stories are capable of teaching us.

Some of the most profound truths I've learned haven't come from books that set out to explain the world. They've come from books that first asked me to imagine another one.