Knowledge for Development

I can't remember exactly when I started this quest to better understand didactic fiction. And I'm not keeping track of how many business novels and business parables I've read to date.

At times, I've used the term "business novels," but didactic fiction covers much more than business novels. This latest didactic novel gives me an opportunity to touch on the distinction. The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance, belongs to the broader didactic fiction category but it is not a business novel. It is an "economics novel."

Business novels and business parables are typically found in the business books section at the library. They tell the story of an entrepreneur or an employee, within the context of a company, a business. On the shelves of my local library, The Invisible Heart was classified as fiction rather than a business book.

There are two reasons for not placing it in the business section:

1) It's a real novel with a plot, conflict, tension, suspense, and interesting characters. Some business novels and especially business parables are thin on these key elements of a good novel.

2) It's about economic theory and policy, and while it touches on the role of private enterprise, it is not about any particular enterprise or business; That being said, it would have been fitting to place it in the section with economics books rather than fiction.

The author is Russell Roberts, professor of economics as George Mason University. The Invisible Heart is Roberts' second "novel," published in 2001.

The novel is accompanied by a Teachers' Guide, available on the author's website, and there are resources listed at the end of the book.

The intent of the book is clearly to teach key economic principles. In that sense, it is very didactic -- in a good way. The "teaching" is done primarily through dialogue (think Plato's Socratic dialogues), with the main character being under pressure to explain his views about economics, constantly being challenged and put to the test.

The conversation is one-sided, reflecting the author's intent and bias. So, while the purpose is clearly didactic, the reader doesn't need to be passionate about economic theory and policy to read through the book. The story stands on its own, economic theory or not.

I hope the author uses the novel in his own economics classes. The story may be partially autobiographical, or at least inspired by his own experience as an economics professor.

Russel Roberts' first novel, The Choice: A Fable of Free trade and Protectionism was published in 1994. His most recent novel, published in 2008, is The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity.

This novel is the closest I have found to what I am trying to achieve: a real novel with a story that stands on its own merits; a story I kept reading even when the economic theory and policy discussion didn't keep my interest.

Interested in knowing more about the story itself, check out this review by another reader.

The quest never ends. As I was reading one of the reviews of the latest Russell Roberts book, I discovered other "economics novels."

Next steps: