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Rarely have world writers of such variety and distinction appeared on a contents list in the same anthology. The list includes Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Margaret Atwood, John Updike, Susan Sontag, Hanif Kureishi and Jose Saramago. Nadine Gordimer, has edited and introduces the collection. Their stories capture the range of emotions and situations of our human universe- tragedy, comedy, fantasy, satire, dramas of sexual love and of war, in different continents and cultures. Along with making music, the art of story-telling is the oldest form of enchantment as entertainment. The twenty-one stories in this anthology are written in different 'voices' - vividly individual styles - capturing the marvellous possibilities of the use of words by living writers. All twenty-one writers have given their stories without any fee or royalty. The originating publishers of each edition have produced the book without receiving any profit or royalty. All proceeds will go to an HIV/Aids charity.… (more)
User reviews
There was only one story I couldn't finish (the one by Amos Oz, mostly because I wasn't in the mood for a demonstration of Arab-Israeli politics) and several that were fairly unmemorable, but also a few that were delightful discoveries. I particularly enjoyed "The Centaur" by José Saramago and two rather philosophical stories about language and the writing process -- "The Letter Scene" by Susan Sontag and "To Have Been" by Claudio Magris. I found a few authors with whom I was previously unacquainted and whom I may read more of in the future.
On the other hand, I was disappointed by the contributions by a couple of authors whose work I know well, namely the Germans Günter Grass and Christa Wolf. Wolf's story was a poor choice for a volume appearing in translation, as it is centered around German idioms which use the word "blue", and whatever fun there was in the wordplay of the original didn't survive the translation. The excerpt from "My Century" by Grass also does not show the author at his best. I think of both writers as more novelists than short story writers, so the problem may simply be that the form is not very effective for showcasing their writing. I don't know whether this is true for other authors in the volume -- that is, that the stories included feel unrepresentative of their work in general.