Françoise Lavocat, former member of the ICLA theory committee, has co-edited, with Alison James and Akihiro Kubo, the collection Can Fiction Change the World? Published by Legenda, the book studies the effects of fiction at different scales, from the paradoxes of individual emotional response to large-scale collective action. From Don Quixote’s delusions to Emma Bovary’s romantic daydreams, fiction has often portrayed its own effects in negative terms, while contemporary anxieties about video games and virtual worlds revive ancient fears of the confusion between fiction and reality. Beyond these representations and denunciations, this edited collection of essays demonstrates that there is ample evidence of the influence of fictional universes on real lives, identities and social practices.