How many of you feel this alienation and discomfort almost as soon as you open the screen in your cellphone, dip into social media, answer email, or listen to the news? The sages from India called illusion maya and they pray: “from delusion lead me to truth."

Literature helps us to deal with a society awash in illusion. Calvino points us toward precision, logic, and detail as one answer. Coates asks readers to examine American society with exacting truth. Rushdie's readers find truth through fictions in which we find wisdom and compassion for the people we inhabit for the duration of the tale.