ABSTRACT
Issue 54 June 2014
Fiction, more than any other written form, explains and expands life. Biology, of course, also explains life; so do biography and biochemistry and biophysics and biomechanics and biopsychology. But all the bio-sciences yield to fiction. Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, how it goes wrong, and how we lose it. Novels speak to and from the mind, the heart, the eye, the genitals, the skin; the conscious and the unconscious.
Julian Barnes Through The Window (2011) Preface. 2011 Booker Prize winner.