Man Booker International prize 2015: the finalists speak | Books | The Guardian

Is it the duty of the novelist to engage with the political issues of the day? No on both counts: "political" and "issues of the day". Writers should engage with matters of significance, and these are often not issues of the day - climate change is a good example. Nor can climate change be defined as narrowly "political"; like literature it is about much more than that. (Amitav Gosh)