What Novels or short stories tell us about a country’s culture?

Recently, I have been reading a novel written by a renowned author. This is a novel in the spy-action thriller genre- a genre that I like a lot.
Here, the story starts with characters that are part of the action, some deaths and some mysterious questions. However, there is something in the novel that aroused a special interest in me.
One of the lead characters, who is investigating something recalls a few aspects of her life as a child and in teens.
She had been from a not so well family, and had suffered discrimination in her school.
She suffered getting bad comments from members of another ethnicity.
Even members of her community who were better off were not friendly towards her. And this girl used to studied in United States.
Then, she had an infatuation with a boy with whom she did not had very good experiences. She was suffering from guilt, and had altered her lifestyle to be away from many wordly distractions.

I had an impression that such things were lesser in United States. Yet from reading all this, I inferred that this scenario is not much different from what we have in India- in some ways, it is even worse.

This let me become aware of something about the cultural aspects of another country. In a way, this means, that apart from entertaining readers, and engaging them, novels and short stories can make one aware of things about another culture.
This is a good source of cultural education by informal means.
One can then search for related things and can even know more in terms of factual information.
Or, just be aware of what is happening in different parts of the world. This can even help people who travel to other places, and especially to the regular travelers.

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