Inquiry into the written narrative's effect on social cognition is normally left to literary scholars and philosophers. Two experiments demonstrated narrative fiction's power to elicit empathy and reduce implicit and explicit prejudice against Arab-Muslims. Participants were randomly assigned to read a full narrative, condensed narrative, or a non-narrative. critically, the full and condensed narratives were matched on counterstereotypical exemplars and exposure to Arab-Muslim culture so that the additional reduction in prejudice in the full narrative condition represented the unique power of the narrative. The narrative was particularly effective at reducing implicit prejudice in low dispositional perspective-takers. Partially explaining this effect, the narrative appeared to provide a safe haven from intergroup anxiety so that they could use perspective-taking to reduce prejudice. These findings demonstrate the narrative's power to induce spontaneous empathy and perspective-taking and consequently reduce implicit and explicit prejudice.