cover image An Embarrassment of Tyrannies

An Embarrassment of Tyrannies

. George Braziller, $30 (347pp) ISBN 978-0-8076-1441-9

A powerful, often inspirational, testament to freedom of expression against all forms of tyranny, this collection of essays, poems, interviews and letters is culled from the 25-year history of the British journal Index on Censorship. The goal of the magazine, as Webb, former literary editor of the Guardian, explains in his opening essay, was to include writings (many of which have been banned in the authors' respective countries) that document instances of repression within the Soviet Union, Bosnia, China, Argentina, Greece and other authoritarian regimes, and to be a watchdog against any form of censorship that interferes with the unfettered exchange of information. Webb and Bell, an editor at Index, have brought together gripping writing from some of the world's most outspoken writers: in ""A Writer's Freedom"" Nadine Gordimer defines freedom as the ""right to maintain and publish to the world a deep, intense, private view of the situation in which he finds his society."" In ""Urbicides, Massacres, Common Graves,"" Spanish-Catalan novelist Juan Goytisolo describes the devastation of war while walking through Chechnya in 1996. Writers of the other 63 entries include Italian Nobel laureate Dario Fo (who discusses the U.S. forbidding him to enter the country as late as 1983), Stephen Spender (Index's founder), Vaclav Havel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Salman Rushdie. While celebrating stories of human courage over the most savage forms of persecution, this volume serves as a grim reminder that governmental injustice remains widespread. (Aug.)