Fiction - Both Entertainment and Education

         Although fiction is the most entertaining genre to read for me, I feel it also serves a much more important purpose than just entertainment. Through fiction, the reader is able to imagine themselves inside a story, living through it, making fiction an extremely effective way to engulf the reader in stories and cultures set in any corner of the globe. Although fiction isn't reflective of what has factually happened like nonfiction, it is able to create an entire world for the reader, one which allows the reader to gain a new perspective to better understand the real world.

        A perfect example of this is Kamila Shamsie's novel Home Fire. If I had just read an article on how ISIS recruitment tore apart families and created so much racial bias against Muslims, I wouldn't have been able to understand what families such as Isma's had to go through to the same level I did from reading Home Fire. Reading Shamsie's novel, I was able to gain a new perspective towards families with members subject to ISIS's recruitment groups. If someone had told me a few months back that I would be feeling sorry for a recruited ISIS member, I would've been left speechless. Today, that is exactly what happened – all because of the power of fiction.