Before Mr Kissinger himself enters the narrative, the reader is offered 200 pages of history of modern China and its foreign relations.

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In spite of some of her novels being banned at the time by South Africa's white-only government, the Nobel laureate insists that any author who tries to push a message on a reader ahead of narrative is in danger at best of producing bad writing, and at worst of lapsing into propaganda.

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Its comic irony signaled his narrative voice, which artfully distanced the reader from emotionally grim material.

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And because agency informs the narrative, it is important for the reader too.

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As the narrative sweeps between the great powers of Europe, the reader is left wondering what happened in, say, the Netherlands (then still an empire), in Sweden or in Italy.

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The serialized piece of fiction draws the reader in with interactive elements, creating a new kind of narrative that could be the future of e-books.

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