Writers Under Siege
Voices of Freedom from Around the World
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
The freedom to write is under threat today throughout the world, with more than 1,000 writers, journalists, and publishers known to be imprisoned or persecuted in more than 100 countries. Writers Under Siege bears witness to the power and danger of the pen, and to the powerful longing for the right to use it without fear. Collected here are fifty contributions by writers who have paid dearly for the privilege of writing. Some have been tortured; some have been killed. All understand the cost of speaking up and speaking out.
This book was prepared by PEN, which is both the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization. It commemorates PEN’s eighty-fifth anniversary and celebrates PEN’s work by giving voice to persecuted writers from around the globe. The contributors come from more than twenty countries, from Belarus to Zimbabwe. Many are well-known in the English-speaking world, including Orhan Pamuk, from Turkey, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature; Harold Pinter, from England, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature; Aung San Suu Kyi, from Burma, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize; and Anna Politkovskaya, from Russia, the noted journalist and author who was murdered in 2006, shortly after writing the piece that appears in this collection. Other contributors are less famous, perhaps, but their contributions are no less compelling. In prose and poetry, in fiction and non-fiction, they reveal the personal consequences of war, conflict, terrorism, and authoritarianism.
While the pieces collected here differ in their settings and their subjects, all are riveting. Grouped into four sections — Prison, Death, Asylum, and The Freedom to Write — they call our attention to the fundamental humanity we share and highlight the inhumanity we can so easily condone.
Contributors include: Chris Abani, Angel Cuadra Landrove, Asiye Guzel, Augusto Ernesto Llosa Giraldo, Mamadali Makhmudov, Orhan Pamuk, Harold Pinter, Anna Politkovskaya, Aung San Suu Kyi, Thich Tue Sy, Gai Tho, and Ken Saro-Wiwa.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
To mark 85 years of work assuring that oppressed writers are heard in their home countries and around the world, the literary and human rights organization PEN presents a collection of essays from some 50 writers; their one common trait, as noted by Michael Palin in a blurb, is that "they have all been coerced into not writing." Designed to demonstrate the major ways in which writers are silenced, shocking and sobering lessons in author suppression are broken up into sections on prison, death and exile, though the distinction seems arbitrary; the central theme of oppression weighs much more heavily on writers' stories than the specific methods employed. It's important, both thematically and practically, to note that PEN does not differentiate between the talents and skills of persecuted writers; as such, not every piece succeeds, and the similarity of the subject matter can make them difficult to distinguish. But grace notes abound, such as Zimbabwean poet, novelist and columnist Chenjerai Hove explaining, "every new word and metaphor I create is a little muscle in the act of pushing the dictatorship away." As an act of commemoration, as well as a sobering reminder of a world in which writers are frequently-and all too easily-silenced, this is an exceptional anthology.
