“It’s always nice to learn a thing or two from a novel, don’t you think?” Novel Book:In the Light of What We Know Source: In the Light of What We Know
“The difference does not lie in the things that news does that novels do not do, but in the things that novels do that news cannot do. In other words, this basic technique of news - just one among many - is something a novel can use, but a novel can deploy a multitude of other techniques also. Novels are not bound by the rules of reportage. Far from it. They're predicated on delivering experience.” LyingNovel Author:Zia Haider Rahman
“By delivering experience, novels can alter the stance we adopt toward news - not much, I'm sure, but they can make it a little more difficult for us to consign "other people" to our tidy boxes. Widening our imaginative life might - it's not hard to imagine - also develop our ability to contemplate counterfactuals and our capacity to speculate about how things might differ from how they're being represented.” PeopleDifficultAbilityNovelImagineContemplatingImaginative Author:Zia Haider Rahman
“Listening to people discussing a novel can be very interesting, if you've read whatever novel is being discussed. No one, it seems, ever says, "This is a great book but I didn't like it." Taking a little time to think about why this might be has been very liberating.” PeopleThinkingBookInterestingNovelListeningVery InterestingLiberatingTime To ThinkGreat Book Author:Zia Haider Rahman
“Novels need readers of a certain kind, people who are patient and enjoy immersing themselves in another perspective for uninterrupted stretches of time. Reading habits might well be changing. People who pay for novels might overlap significantly with those who engage in Twitter and Facebook.” PeopleKindReadingEnjoyNovelPerspectiveHabitPatientReading HabitsKind People Author:Zia Haider Rahman
“There was a period of a few months, however, when I had a dreadful physical pain. I had just started writing a particular section of the novel and was initially worried that it would affect my work. I was woken by awful nightmares; I saw several doctors, tests were performed, nothing came of them, and the medics were mystified.It was two days after I finished writing the section that the penny dropped. The pain had suddenly disappeared and so too had the nightmares. I'd got things muddled. The pain and the nightmares were both psychosomatic.” WritingPainNovelWorriedNightmarePhysical Pain Author:Zia Haider Rahman
