A NEW BOOK by Steven McKenzie is excerpted on the Bible and Interpretation website:

Jonah and Genre

Readers who have misconstrued the genre of Jonah as history have therefore approached it with an erroneous set of expectations and have often tried to force it to fit their expectations. When it is discovered that the book does not fit those expectations, the tendency is often to blame the book, declaring it "untrue" and implying that it is somehow of less significance because it does not describe historical events.

From How to Read the Bible (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Permission Granted from Oxford University Press

By Steven McKenzie,
Professor, Rhodes College
August 2005