The relationship between literature and life can be construed as a counterpoint of fate and freewill. Rather than equating fate to the 'hand we are dealt' which is reducible to the social or familial environments into which we are born, this book explores the idea of fate through the books that shape our lives and under whose influence we write.

Michael Jackson is Senior Research Fellow in World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of over forty books of poetry, ethnography, fiction and memoir, including The Politics of Storytelling (2002), The Genealogical Imagination (2021), Coincidences (2021) andFriendship (2023)