Yet literary fiction is not normally considered an important source of knowledge in the field of international development. There clearly exists a hierarchy of authority concerning what constitutes “valid” development policy knowledge, which is generally predicated on the
form in which this knowledge is presented. Although there have been some attempts to broaden this knowledge base beyond the familiar academic monographs and policy manuals, such as the World Bank’s “Voices of the Poor” study in 2000, these are rare, and anything that does not match up to standard forms of representation – such as literary fiction – are generally discarded, ignored, or otherwise marginalized as “merely anecdotal”.