The Technological Shift Behind the World's First Novel

By Heart is a series in which authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature. See entries from Colum McCann, George Saunders, Emma Donoghue, Michael Chabon, and more.

Great books shape lives, everyone knows that. This series explores the idea that even a single line of poetry or prose can rewire something in a person’s brain, changing the way they think or feel. But in a new book, The Written World, the Harvard professor Martin Puchner argues that literature’s impact extends far beyond the individual experience—its collective import may be far greater than readers realize.

In a globetrotting, epoch-spanning history, Puchner argues that written works—and the ever-changing technologies used to sustain them—have defined societies since the beginning of recorded time. It’s texts, after all, from The Iliad to the Quran to the U.S. Constitution, that have defined religions, shaped the priorities of nations, and inspired the most momentous actions of historic leaders. (Alexander the Great, for example, slept with a dagger under his pillow—and beside it, a copy of The Iliad.)

“Literature isn’t just for book lovers,” Puchner writes in his introduction. “Ever since it emerged 4,000 years ago, it has shaped the lives of most humans on