My tutors at Cambridge would play something of a game with English literature undergraduate students, asking us to discuss the purpose of fiction, the role of the writer in society inviting tumultuous bad-tempered debates, lurching from grand declarations proclaiming fictions redemptive properties, spiritual notions of art as a soul-cleansing experience to the nihilistic counterpoint that writing serves no measurable point. After all, look at the example of well-read dictators knee-deep in the blood of their countrymen. Ive spent a great deal of my professional life as an author exploring regimes created by dictators. Ive written three novels set in authoritarian Communist regimes and research has shown that these brutal, savage leaders were often dressed in culture, fascinated by writing, intrigued and suspicious at the same time. Doesnt that fact prove that writers must have influence of some kind? Tyrants desire supreme power first and foremost over reality but since that is impossible to achieve and armies cannot be conjured from clouds, they quickly turn their attention to the truth. If they cannot adjust the material world to their whims, perhaps they can control our perception of the world whether it be to declare that theres no shortage of food even as farmers boil leather boots for soup or, in the case of my novel, that theres no crime even as the most heinous crimes are being committed. Dictators covet a writers alchemy the transformation of words into reality yet they have no understanding of where fiction draws its power. When writers serve them, the spell is broken, their fiction is maligned; readers smell betrayal in the words. What does this tell us? A writer doesnt create truth; he serves it truth is his master. Is this, then, the role of a writer, a brave truth-teller: to stand up to power? Perhaps it might be one role, but surely there are other roles, and many great works of art have no obvious polemic behind them. Indeed, aggressive and explicit political agendas can often be tedious and one-dimensional no more than propaganda. This question so often produces a circular set of arguments that arrive nowhere. Perhaps this is why, since having graduated university, my instinct has been to leave the question alone. Wrestling with it proves difficult, and my observations lurch from idealistic to pretentious. To be honest, I must accept that I simply dont know. I dont know. Therefore, when I was asked to write this short article a week ago my heart sank at the prospect. Ive been stalling for a week, unsure whether I should distract the reader with jokes and anecdotes, or grapple with the issue head-on and tie myself in knots. I was leaning toward well-written frivolity when something happened to me. In the last few days, Ive been petitioned to boycott the International Writers' Festival in Jerusalem. The experience has been intense, although not yet aggressive. Ive received numerous emails, tweets, messages posted on my Facebook page, sent to my agent, published on various blogs, requesting that I pull out. Ive been deemed a disappointment. Perhaps for the first time in my life I was conscious that the question I was being asked to address what is the role of a writer was no longer a mere abstract intellectual concept. I needed to grapple with it in a real and urgent way. Im no longer a student in a debate. Im a writer and the question was being asked of me specifically. One of the points presented to me by those advocating a cultural boycott of Israel was that the festival explicitly states that its purpose is to bring writers together from around the world and have them share a stage with Israeli writers. Those demanding a boycott presented this as a negative when it is, surely, the only reason for any literature festival to exist. What other purpose could it serve? More fundamentally, this notion of bringing people together taps into something at the heart of writing itself writing connects by its very definition. We share the same text, a set of pages read by millions of people dotted around globe. Of course we react differently, but the evidence for various interpretations in our responses comes from the exact same set of words. Theres magic in this: Were forced to comprehend the words differently when we hear contrary opinions using the same evidence. Yet I fear the magic dies as soon as we begin to draw lines around people, grouping readers into categories of those we will and wont listen to. When I wrote "Child 44" I had no idea it would achieve an international audience. To be invited to other countries, to listen to readers opinions, to share a stage with challenging minds, to be shown new places and given an insight into other cultures these invitations have been, without a doubt, a great privilege. I feel extremely lucky and grateful every time Im invited. I might not be able to answer the question originally asked of me by this article what is the role of a writer but I am absolutely certain about the process of becoming a better writer. And its not achieved by staying at home.
The writer is British and the author of three books: "Child 44," "The Secret Speech" and "Agent 6."