PHA-Exchange> Telling tales for AIDS, Nadine Gordimer & other world writers

[Claudio]

From: "Vern Weitzel" <vern.weitzel at undp.org>
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - Nobel prize-winning novelist
Nadine Gordimer launched a literary-style Live Aid,
with a short-story collection by some of world's most
distinguished writers to benefit HIV (news - web
sites)/AIDS (news - web sites) treatment.

At a press conference, where she was introduced by
Salman Rushdie as "the Bob Geldof of the literary
world," Gordimer said she had taken her cue from
musicians who had performed benefit concerts for
causes like AIDS and famine relief.
"I asked myself, what had we writers done?" the South
African novelist said. "The answer was nothing. No
group effort."

Geldof organized musicians behind the 1985 Live Aid
concerts, which raised funds for Ethiopian famine
victims.
Gordimer wrote to 20 novelists, including four fellow
Nobel prize winners -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gunter
Grass, Jose Saramago and Kenzaburo Oe -- asking each
to contribute one short story and to waive all
royalties.
"And I got wonderful responses from every one of
them," she said.

The result was a 21-story collection, "Telling Tales,"
which has so far found 13 publishers around the world
-- all of whom agreed to distribute the book without
taking any profit.
"It's a great book. Some of the stories are real
classics," said Rushdie, who was also among the
invited contributors, along with the likes of John
Updike, Margaret Atwood, Woody Allen, Michel Tournier
and Arthur Miller.

Specifically, the money generated from the worldwide
sales of "Telling Tales" will finance the work of the
Treatment Action Campaign, a South African HIV/AIDS
treatment non-governmental organisation.

"Musicians have contributed their talents to jazz, pop
and classical concerts for the benefit of the 40
million men, women and children worldwide infected
with HIV/AIDS, two-thirds of whom are in Africa,"
Gordimer, who edited the collection, said in the
introduction to the book.
"We decided that we too should ... give something of
our ability, as imaginative writers, to contribute in
our way to the fight against this disease from which
no country and no individual is safely isolated," she
said.

None of the stories take HIV/AIDS as their direct
subject, but many deal with themes of death, illness
and isolation.
Updike, who attended Tuesday's launch, said he had
jumped at the chance to join the project.
"Unlike rock stars, writers tend to live small and
private lives," he said, adding that it was only right
that they "put, in a small way, their names on the
line."

Here is the extraordinary contents list of TELLING
TALES:
Bulldog by Arthur Miller; The Centaur by José
Saramago; Down The Quiet Street by Es’kia Mphahlele;
The Firebird’s Nest by Salman Rushdie; Cell Phone by
Ingo Schulze; Death Constant Beyond Love by Gabriel
Garcia Marquez; The Age Of Lead by Margaret Atwood;
Witness Of An Era by Günter Grass; The Journey To The
Dead by John Updike; Sugar Baby by Chinua Achebe; The
Way Of The Wind by Amos Oz; Warm Dogs by Paul Theroux;
The Ass And The Ox by Michel Tournier; Death Of A Son
by Njabulo Ndebele; The Letter Scene by Susan Sontag;
To Have Been by Claudio Magris; A Meeting At Last by
Hanif Kureishi; Associations In Blue by Christa Wolf;
The Rejection by Woody Allen; The Ultimate Safari by
Nadine Gordimer; Abandoned Children Of This Planet by
Kenzaburo Oe.