Although not as old as the Pulitzer Prizes, divided into several categories, the Booker Prize established in 1969 is probably to be the most prestigious literary prize there is. This year, novelist Edmund de Waal, an English artist and writer, in announcing the shortlist for the Booker, said the writers had examined “the fault lines of our times.”
The six selected are not about “issues,” however, but are works of fiction that explore the ways borders, time zones, generations, race, sexuality and identity impact our lives. What does a work of fiction have to do with how we live in the world of today? Fiction, great fiction, enables us to enter and not to shrink back from our deepest emotions.
Whether it’s Dickens or Hugo, Mann or Dostoevsky, or even fables like the story of Jonah or Job, the impact on our world and our lives is monumental. We enter a world which may at first seem foreign to us but which often speaks to our souls that surprise us, challenge us, and sometimes even delights us. Every age has its fault line; great fiction enables us to see how the fault lines of other times still affect us today.
Prayer for the Day
Enter into us this day, O God, opening our minds,
Even as we read of ages past from writers long gone;
Imbue us, O Lord, with a sense of the power of words,
As we look to writers of our time and age.
With language to express our deepest thoughts and fears,
May we turn to you as our inspiration for living today.
In the name of the One whose words challenge us still,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist (1803-1882)
Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.
Joyce Carol Oates, American novelist
I called to the Lord out of my distress, and God answered me;
Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my vice.
You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas,
And the flood surrounded me, all your waves and billows passed over me.
Then I said, “I am driven away from your sight; H
How shall I look gain upon your holy temple?”
Jonah 2: 2-4