Given up on reading? Elif Shafak on why we still need novels
Recent studies suggest we’ve fallen out of love with reading – but the more chaotic our times, the deeper is our need to slow down and read fiction
A recent YouGov poll found that 40% of Britons have not read a book in the last year. “The literary era has come to an end,” Philip Roth prophesied in 2000. “The evidence is the culture, the evidence is the society, the evidence is the screen.” Roth believed that the habit of mind that literature required was bound to disappear. People would no longer have the concentration or the isolation needed to read novels.