New From NYU Press: Writers Under Seige: Voices of Freedom from Around the World

Writers Under Seige: Voices of Freedom from Around the World

Edited by Lucy Popescu and Carole Seymour-Jones
With an Introduction by Tom Stoppard and Foreword by Hari Kunzru

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 Seige bears witness to the power of the pen. Collected here are 50 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.

Prepared by PEN, the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization, the book commemorates PEN’s eighty-fifth anniversary.

The contributors come from 20 countries, from Belarus to Zimbabwe. Many are well-known: Orhan Pamuk, from Turkey, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature; Harold Pinter; Aung San Suu Kyi, from Burma, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize; and Anna Politkovskaya, from Russia, the noted journalist who was murdered in 2006, shortly after writing the piece that appears in this collection. Other contributors are less famous, but their works are no less compelling. They reveal the personal consequences of war, conflict, terrorism, and authoritarianism — in prose and poetry, in fiction and non-fiction.

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