Book Box: Fiction for Economists - Hindustan Times
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Book Box: Fiction for Economists

Oct 07, 2022 06:05 PM IST

Why reading fiction will help you be a better economist, plus 5 fiction books with economic themes.

Dear Reader,

Cents and Sensibility.  PREMIUM
Cents and Sensibility. 

A fortnight ago, I travelled to Ashoka University to talk about fiction with the Economics Society.

I got my first economics lesson early in life, I told them.

"I was 8 years ago and in trouble. So I decided to run away.

The scene is still vivid in my mind: Eight-year-old me, holding a bag and standing at the back gate of the Jamshedpur bungalow we lived in. The bag had a change of clothes, and my running away book – The Secret Island by Enid Blyton.

The Secret Island. 
The Secret Island. 

The four children in this book, run away by boat, to an island. They build a tree house, sell homemade baskets built of branches and buy candles and kerosene. They have chickens, whose eggs they sell – so they have this kind of little subsistence economy going on- and that’s a big part of their adventures.

I pull the book out, and then I look at the street — I have no boat, I have no money for a bus, I have no community to help build this mini economy. As a single individual in an economic system, it’s not so easy to walk out — this was my first lesson in economics."

But of course, I never thought of it as an economics lesson — and this is the magic of fiction — it doesn’t feel didactic. It draws you in, with a story, with a plot, with characters and emotions and your attention is completely captured and all the learning centres in your brain are switched on.

An economist and a professor of literature get together to say this in Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn From the Humanities. Fiction paints powerful pictures of the effects of economic policies on people’s lives, they say. Stories reveal the ethical underpinnings of economic models, they show up costs that cannot easily be measured in numbers, like those caused by the alienation of labour. Stories provide a counter-narrative to dominant economic theories.

Cents and Sensibility. 
Cents and Sensibility. 

I quote Cents and Sensibility and Mihir Desai in The Wisdom of Finance to make my case for fiction, to the young students of economics at Ashoka University. And point to Thomas Piketty. The famous economist uses novels like Pride and Prejudice, as dramatic proof of the immobility of a 19th-century world, where inequality guarantees more inequality.

We end our session, with five fiction books – a starter kit to look at economics from the lens of fiction. I don’t include classics – counter-narratives from writers like Charles Dickens, Premchand, Mahasweta Devi, and Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. Or short stories from Chekhov and Tolstoy like How Much Land Does a Man Require. Those are for later. Start instead, with these:

Book 1 of 5: A Road Trip

The Lincoln Highway. 
The Lincoln Highway. 

This is the story of four people on a road trip. It’s also the story of agriculture in America, banking, foreclosures, the inheritance laws and the kind of profound effect these economic structures have on individual lives and personalities. Author Amor Towles won plaudits for his storytelling in A Gentleman in Moscow and this latest book, The Lincoln Highway, is just as special.

Book 2 of 5: The Financial Crisis

Behold the Dreamers. 
Behold the Dreamers. 

Set during the 2008 financial crisis, this is the story of two families – that of Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers and of his chauffeur Jende Jonga. What comes through powerfully in Behold the Dreamers is how the boom and bust of the economic system affect everyone in life-draining ways.

Book 3 of 5: Economy in the Family

Ghachar Ghochar. 
Ghachar Ghochar. 

In Bengaluru, India, a family move out of genteel poverty, as a business becomes a success. But what should have been a rags to riches feel-good tale, turns into something sinister. And it’s probably the economics of it. Read this gem of a novella translated from Kannada — Ghachar Ghochar has been on the New York Times critics list and has been recommended by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Book 4 of 5: Labour Alienation in Silicon Valley

Sourdough. 
Sourdough. 

This funny fantasy Silicon Valley romp takes a satirical look at the economy. Sourdough is the story of Lois Clary, a highly paid software engineer, who spends every waking minute coding, to make robotic arms function in a more human way, so that the world's workforce can be replaced with robots. Her only human contact is limited to the two brothers who run the neighbourhood hole-in-the-wall takeaway. Then disaster strikes when the brothers have to leave. Author Robin Sloan once worked at Twitter, and he gets the Silicon Valley vibe so perfectly. If you enjoy this book, try a different look, at the same subject of alienation of labour, this time in Japan, in Convenience Store Woman.

Book 5 of 5: Economy of the Future

Klara and the Sun. 
Klara and the Sun. 

This story jumps light years ahead to a futuristic economy, where robots do manual work and even provide companionship to human beings. Klara and the Sun is a heartrending story, told with deceptive simplicity by Nobel prizewinning author Kazuo Ishiguro.

Hope you enjoy these stories — and of course there are so many more. Next week, I bring you tellings and re-tellings of the Ramayana story, to celebrate Dussehra and Diwali.

Until then, Happy Reading!

Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com

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