NCERT Book Class 12 English (kaleidoscope) Non Fiction 1 Freedom

118/KALEIDOSCOPE

Non-fiction
INTRODUCTION

Non-fiction is virtually everything that we read as
literature but that does not come under the
categories of novel, short story, play or poem. Non-
fiction, then, is writing that is factually true. It
can include articles, editorials, reports, critical
essays and interviews, humorous sketches,
biographies and autobiographies, lectures,
speeches and sermons.
This section contains six non-fiction pieces, three
by established writers of the canon: George
Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf and D.H.Lawrence;
one each by Ingmar Bergman, Amartya Sen and
Isaac Asimov.
The themes are: freedom, stream of consciousness,
importance of the novel as a creative form, the
details that make film-making a creative art and
the argumentative tradition in Indian culture
based on the famous dialogue between Krishna
and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Asimov’s piece
talks of the universe of science fiction, correlating
it to accounts of mythical superhuman beings in
the pre-scientific universe which served to fulfil
the same emotional needs as science fiction does.
The purpose of such writing is to explain, analyse,
define or clarify something—to provide us with
information and to show the how and why of
things.