Literature and storytelling have an increasingly important role to play in an era defined by “anxiety, anger and AI”, award-winning novelist Elif Shafak has argued.
Speaking on the British Council's Our World, Connected podcast, author of The Forty Rules of Love reflected on the challenges of living in a world shaped by rapid technological change, information overload and growing social fragmentation.
While AI continues to reshape how people access information and communicate, Shafak said the deeper challenge facing society is not the technology itself, but the risk of becoming disconnected from each other:
"The moment we become numb, the moment we become disconnected, atomised to such an extent that we stop hearing each other's voices and each other's stories, I think that's a much more dangerous world to live in."
Shafak said society has become overwhelmed with information but has started to neglect knowledge and wisdom: “We have forgotten to say, ‘I don’t know’.”
Shafak asserted that opportunities for slower, deeper engagement are increasingly important, with literature offering a powerful way to challenge division and better understand different perspectives: "(Literature) dismantles dualities. It dismantles polarisations. It diminishes that distance between us versus them."
Discussing the role stories can play in helping people connect across cultures, backgrounds and identities she added, "As we read a work of fiction, as we write a work of fiction, we travel beyond our little corner of the universe, beyond the boundaries of the self... we become someone else and then someone else. We connect with otherness... It helps us to develop empathy."
Shafak's comments come amid growing concerns that young people are reading less. Recent National Literacy Trust research found that only 36.1% of children and young people aged 8 to 18 say they enjoy reading in their free time.
On 8 October, the British Council and National Literacy Trust will invite people around the world to do something increasingly rare: stop, slow down and read.
Through Take 10 to Read, participants across more than 85 countries and territories will be encouraged to take ten minutes out of their day to read for pleasure as part of a global attempt to set a new GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for the most people reading online in 12 hours. This global challenge echoes Safak’s call for more meaningful engagement in a world saturated by information.
Shafak insisted that engagement with literature and the arts remain essential to building the understanding and empathy needed to navigate an increasingly divided world.
“For knowledge we need to slow down because that cannot be rushed. So, we need longer conversations, literary festivals, slow journalism, podcasts, books. For wisdom, we need emotional intelligence and empathy because that’s another level of connection, and for that, we need the arts and we need literature.”
The latest episode of Our World, Connected featuring Elif Shafak is available on all major podcast platforms.