Words without borders (www.wordswithoutborders.org) is an international project that aims to promote literature in translation. Its first anthology, Literature from the “Axis of Evil”: Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations, brought together fiction and poetry from seven countries including Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, some of these works being translated into English for the first time. This new anthology, called The World Through the Eyes of Writers, brings together the works of twenty-eight writers from across the world.

Each has been recommended and briefly introduced by another, more well-known writer. Some of these introductions, full of courtesy and love, the introductions are themselves little works of art. Ahdaf Soueif introduces Palestinian writer Hassan Khader along with her own translation of his essay “Shards of Reality and Glass”. Introducing Hunan-based writer Can Xue, Ha Jin adds that though he does not share most of her literary views, he admires her conviction. Introducing Gamal al-Ghitani as “the most important Arab novelist today”, Naguib Mahfouz adds that he is “part of my autobiography”.

No, there is no story listed under “India” as such in this collection; there is, however, because these words are without borders, a superb short story by Bengali writer Parashuram (Rajshekhar Basu), whose country is listed as Bangladesh. “The Scripture Read Backward”, a sharply funny take on the colonial story, is translated by Sukanto Chaudhuri and introduced by Amit Chaudhuri, who writes: “Our longings, if they came true, would be the stuff of comic dystopia.” India features in another way in the extract from Giorgio Manganelli’s “Experiment with India”, a musical four-page paragraph that begins in the temple town of Madurai and ends with a lament for the lost art of “making our dreams solid”.

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