I actually saw a review of ‘An Elergy for Easterly’ (short story collection about Zimbabwe)this weekend that said in one of the stories even Robert Mugabee is slightly redeemed (paraphrase) like that was a good thing, like it would have been a failing of the authors if she’d painted him only as the evil dictator (which she does in many other stories). I’ve read the collection and I don’t agree with that assessment, but imagine what that type of reviewer would make of pure evil Snowball now.

I so don’t want to go back to the days of white and black characters, but I do think character complexity weakens what a politician can make of a novel’s political message, how they can use them, or that at least that’s how politicians will probably perceive it. Happily complexity strengthens a book’s core message for general readers and allows other, more subtle messages to come out about the nature of humanity which hopefully brings us all to understand each other a bit better.

It is interesting the way nonfiction is taking the things fiction usually has — characters, good versus evil, narratives — and using them to make nonfiction more powerful or emotionally resonant.

I love your last point: “Fiction now tends to inspire the personal political actions of an individual, or small groups.”