Literature from the "Axis of Evil": Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations - Hardcover

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9781595580702: Literature from the "Axis of Evil": Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1595580700 ISBN 13: 9781595580702

Publisher: New Press, 2006

Short stories and fiction excerpts from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Sudan, and other countries from whom the government would rather we didn't hear.

"Not knowing what the rest of the world is thinking and writing is both dangerous and boring."—Alane Mason, founding editor, Words Without Borders

During the Cold War, writers behind the Iron Curtain—Solzhenitsyn, Kundera, Milosz—were translated and published in the United States, providing an invaluable window on the Soviet regime's effects on daily life and humanizing the individuals living under its conditions.

Yet U.S. Treasury Department regulations made it almost impossible for Americans to gain access to writings from "evil" countries such as Iran and Cuba until recently. Penalties for translating such works or for "enhancing their value" by editing them included stiff fines and potential jail time for the publisher. With relaxation in 2005 of the Treasury regulations (in response to pressure from the literary and scientific publishing communities that culminated in a lawsuit), it is now possible, for the first time in many years, to read in English works from these disfavored nations.

The New Press and Words Without Borders are proud to be among the first to offer American readers contemporary literature of "enemy nations." Literature from the Axis of Evil includes thirty-five works of fiction from seven countries, most of which have never before been translated into English.

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About the Author:

Alane Mason is a senior editor at W. W. Norton & Company. Dedi Felman is a senior editor at Oxford University Press and lives part-time in Princeton. Samantha Schnee is the former senior editor of Zoetrope: All-Story and lives part-time in Houston. All are editors at Words Without Borders and live primarily in New York City. Words Without Borders is an online magazine for international literature. A partner of PEN American Center, it is hosted by Columbia University and Bard College.

Review:

"Reading Literature from the ‘Axis of Evil’ inevitably makes you think about whether art and literature can help prevent hatred and even war." —San Francisco Chronicle

"[It] has more to say about the historical complexities, conflicts, and nuances of so-called enemy nations than a hundred shelves of polemics and political rhetoric that clutter the front rows of our bookstores." —The Bloomsbury Review

"The best kind of armchair travel book, one that gifts its reader with the cultural understanding and appreciation that even travel doesn’t always provide. . . . If you read this book, you will know more than the Administration does about the cultures and people of America’s so-called enemy nations." —Maudnewton.com

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