Authors Invoke Words to Confront AIDS

South African novelist Nadine Gordimer said she thought that if musicians singing to “feed the world” could raise funds to fight hunger, perhaps writers could put together a “read the world” collection of short stories to raise money to help people with the virus that causes AIDS.

She asked 20 of the world’s leading authors to contribute to an anthology, without fee or royalties. The result is “Telling Tales,” a book published in 11 languages Wednesday to mark World AIDS Day and to benefit HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs in South Africa.

Gordimer and authors Salman Rushdie and John Updike came to the United Nations on Tuesday to talk about the disease and read from their stories.

“Unlike rock stars, writers tend to lead small and private lives, and it’s rare to be invited to participate in any kind of a demonstration for a good cause,” Updike said.

The AIDS pandemic leaves behind stories that are largely untold in many parts of the world, said Gordimer, who serves as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Development Program and has written 13 novels and nine short-story collections. She said that particularly shocking were statistics that one in five children in South Africa will have been orphaned by AIDS at the end of 2005.

“This is the kind of horrifying scenario for the future that makes one want to do whatever little bit one can,” she said.

Words have power, the authors said, and they wanted to use them to counter the silence and misinformation about HIV/AIDS. Rushdie talked about the growing rate of HIV infections in brothels in India, and how few people are speaking about it.

He warned that silence causes myths to grow and ignorance to flourish. AIDS is not a gay disease, or a plague inflicted by the West on the Third World, or a pox on nonbelieving Muslims, Rushdie said.

“These are all very pervasive and dangerous misconceptions that are floating around out there,” he said. “It’s important for us to say our piece about those misconceptions and help them to be knocked down.”

Although Gordimer requested that none of the stories be about HIV/AIDS, some reflect on death, love and community.

Gordimer’s contribution, “The Ultimate Safari,” is about a girl and her family fleeing war in Mozambique through a wild animal preserve, and the displacement and loss they experience.

In “The Firebird’s Nest,” Rushdie writes of other scourges in India: drought and bride-burning, or “dry places catching fire,” he said.

Updike’s story, “The Journey to the Dead,” is about a woman who knows she is dying, and her friends who recoil from her.

Updike also spoke about the way AIDS has changed the way he thinks, writes and lives.

“It has put a dark shadow on sex, and beyond that it has introduced the notion of an insidious contamination that might get you,” he said. “To live a healthy life is to live an antiseptic life now, and in some odd way, your capacity for joy is diminished, haunted by the AIDS plague.”

Among the 21 authors are five Nobel Prize winners -- Gordimer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jose Saramago, Gunter Grass and Kenzaburo Oe.

The others, in addition to Rushdie and Updike, are Chinua Achebe, Woody Allen, Margaret Atwood, Hanif Kureishi, Claudio Magris, Arthur Miller, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Njabulo Ndebele, Amoz Oz, Ingo Schulze, Susan Sontag, Paul Theroux, Michel Tournier and Christa Wolf.