I hope I don't offend anybody, but I'm going to flip my answer for this topic and discuss a book that I wrote that taught me something profound.
While researching the Spanish Inquisition for my novel Serpent's Teeth, I learned more about religious intolerance than I could stomach and actually stopped work on the manuscript for several weeks; it was impossible to face that inhumanity. But by coincidence, I was working on the story at the same time that the genocide was happening in Syria. The sight of millions of people fleeing for their lives from religious persecution resonated with what I was trying to capture in the novel. It moved me and motivated me to finish the story; I had a new understanding of how vital literature can be when it reminds us of how important it is to fight against such inhumanity and to take a stand for tolerance and liberty.
I cried when I wrote those chapters and do so now when I reread them. Not just because of what happened then, but because we still have not learned the lesson today.
I hope I don't offend anybody, but I'm going to flip my answer for this topic and discuss a book that I wrote that taught me something profound.
While researching the Spanish Inquisition for my novel Serpent's Teeth, I learned more about religious intolerance than I could stomach and actually stopped work on the manuscript for several weeks; it was impossible to face that inhumanity. But by coincidence, I was working on the story at the same time that the genocide was happening in Syria. The sight of millions of people fleeing for their lives from religious persecution resonated with what I was trying to capture in the novel. It moved me and motivated me to finish the story; I had a new understanding of how vital literature can be when it reminds us of how important it is to fight against such inhumanity and to take a stand for tolerance and liberty.
I cried when I wrote those chapters and do so now when I reread them. Not just because of what happened then, but because we still have not learned the lesson today.