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Top authors donate stories for human rights

Authors including Joyce Carol Oates, Henning Mankell and Ariel Dorfman have contributed stories to a new collection marking 60 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Alison Flood guardian.co.uk, Thursday 27 August 2009 00.06 BST Article history

Ariel Dorfman has tackled article nine, that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile", while Marina Lewycka has taken on article four, that "no one shall be held in slavery". Top authors around the world, from Joyce Carol Oates to Henning Mankell and David Mitchell, have come together to mark 60 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, penning short stories inspired by each of the declaration's 30 articles.

Some of the writers taking part, including Dorfman and Paulo Coelho, have experienced human rights violations first hand: all have written their stories for free, with all royalties to go to Amnesty International. Coelho has written a story inspired by article 19, that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression". Titled "In the Prison of Repose", his story is drawn from personal experience, as is Dorfman's tale, "Innocent Passage".

"It's not only the pain," said Dorfman. "Not only the devastation. Every time that one of our human rights is violated, anywhere and everywhere, it constitutes a defeat of the imagination, the promise that we were born for something better, something beautiful. So what could be more natural than a group of writers, as diverse as the planet and as ambitious as the air, gathering to use precisely their imagination to re-establish that wounded humanity of ours, renew the promise that beauty still has a say in how to conjure up a different world of, yes, Freedom."

Orange prize-winning Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was inspired by article 23, about work and fair wages, and wrote the story "Sola", in which a young Gambian journalist goes missing after writing an investigative piece about his country. Mankell's epilogue to the collection talks about a friend of his, Sofia, who was blown up by a landmine as a child in Mozambique, but who battled to survive and who is his inspiration.

Andrew Motion has contributed a poem to Freedom, with other writers taking part include James Meek, Kate Atkinson, Amit Chaudhuri, Alan Garner and Ali Smith. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in a foreword for the book, writes that "we are made for the sublime and for freedom: it is my hope that these stories will help us to achieve it".

Amnesty will launch the collection, called Freedom, today at the Edinburgh international book festival in conjunction with Mainstream Publishing.