President Obama says novels taught him how to be a citizen

In a second live public interview with novelist Marilynne Robinson, the US premier says fiction helps us to find truth in a complex world

Barack Obama has said that novels taught him “the most important” things he has learned about being a citizen.

Interviewing Marilynne Robinson in the second instalment of a two-part interview for the New York Review of Books (also available as audio), the American president asked the author if she was worried about people not reading novels anymore, as they are “overwhelmed by flashier ways to pass the time”. For himself, Obama said, “when I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels”.

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