Literature, at its best, should allow us to see the individual rather than the general; to participate in some intimate way in other lives rather than melding them into shapeless abstractions,” writes the editor of Words Without Borders, the excellent online magazine of literature in translation, in the introduction to this anthology. Published in the US in August, Literature from the “Axis of Evil” brings together stories and poems by writers from countries crudely dubbed the “Axis of Evil” by George W. Bush — Iran, Iraq and North Korea — as well as other nations with which the American government shares hostile relations, such as Syria, Libya and Cuba.

In a world where groups, nations, and — we are sometimes told, and are tempted to believe — even entire religions are locked in irresoluble conflict, it is sometimes easier to dissolve our sense of the individual and place instead a collective stamp over peoples and territories. Literature from the “Axis of Evil” seeks to combat this tendency in a way that only literature, which privileges individual experience and presents specific yet sharable human dilemmas, can.

Works featured here are written in diverse styles and have widely different themes. Many feature a broad streak of comedy, showing that although the writers represented live in regimes unsympathetic to freedom of expression and often brutal in their censorship, they have not lost their sense of humour. Perhaps the best story in the entire collection is the Iranian writer Houshang Moradi-Kermani’s “The Vice-Principal”.

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