In my uncharitable moments, I sometimes believe that writers write voguish political fiction in order to inoculate their work from criticism. When you point out that their novel isn’t very good, they can simply say that to evaluate their work according to small-minded aesthetic standards is to miss the point. They are trying to bring some societal horror to light, and the fiction is merely a vehicle for their important message. After all, who could object to fighting injustice? And it’s true that the length and inherent complexity of the novel can, in the right hands, make it the perfect form for exploring issues that resist easy polemic. So, in theory, it’s possible for someone to write a good novel about mass incarceration. Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is not that novel.
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