"Holes" by Louis Sachars – fiction or non-fiction? Essay

Louis Sachar is an award-winning author of twenty-five books. Louis Sachars "Holes" was first published in 1998 in America, and Sachar, the author, has won several awards for the book.
If I have to categorize the book either to non-fiction or fiction I would probably say that the book "Holes" is a non-fiction. This is base don the information from the book and the chance of the events happening in real life. I don't necessarily believes that a curse can decide the outgoing of a life is very realistic. If the work is non-fiction, which I believe it is, it can be proved.
I dont know anyone whose life is being controlled by a family curse, or anyone who's been saved from starving by eating onions on a mountain formed in the shape of a thumb. Since most of "Holes" is realistic, with just a few not-so-realistic elements, I think it is safe to place this book in the non-fiction category.
Free will and fate controlling our lives are something I feel are a theme in Holes. This is based on the fact that Louis Sachar has written the book is such a way that, I as a reader, cant stop the questions about this theme from getting to my brain. Louis Sachar is playing with the idea of destiny, but he never directly tells us readers, what to think. Is the curse real? Does it actually determine what happens to Stanley and his family in this book? Or is it just a funny trick by Sachar? Different members of the Yelnats family seems to feel different by the curse, and ideas around it. Regardless of what they believe, it seems like it affects their life - Usually for the worse.
Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that started with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather. Therefore, Stanley isnt too surprised when he in unjustly is sent to a boys' detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys were told to build character by spending all day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep.
It does not take long for Stanley to realize there is more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. But what could possibly be buried under a dried-up lake? Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this humorous and child-friendly book, that will leave you speechless.
The story of Holes switches back and forth between the present and the past. It is actually hard to guess in the beginning how the book is going to end, at least without knowing the "past". The transitions are gentle enough between the past and the present so that the reader which is great. When the present is finally understandable everything seems to fall into place. This literary device is called a flashback. It is the past that is explaining the present. Symbols such as the title is also a literary device that is used.