Nepal, May 9 -- Every year when the Swedish Academy announces the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, I find myself contemplating the same age-old questions. What does literature do? Why do we need literature? Would we be worse off, the way we would be worse off if there was no physics or medicine, without literary masterpieces? Simple as these questions may sound, a thorough analysis takes us into the very heart of our human condition.

Literature exists for several reasons. One reason for its enduring presence is that it serves as a witness to the events of the society. Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, for example, is a living document of the Spanish Civil War and, in general, of war itself as it vividly portrays the brutalitie...