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The twentieth century is frequently characterized in terms of its unprecedented levels of bloodshed. More human beings were killed or allowed to die by human cause than ever before in history. The impact of the century’s carnage does not end at the lives that were taken; the atrocities continue to take their toll on those who survived, on those who bore witness, and on succeeding generations.

Blooming through the Ashes features writings about this historic violence and its aftermath in a global anthology that brings together the work of Nobel laureates Seamus Heaney, Toni Morrison, Czeslaw Milosz, Wole Soyinka, Elie Wiesel, Imre Kertesz, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Eugenio Montale, and Pablo Neruda. In non-fiction and fiction, these writers and others reflect on the litany of man-made violence that marred the twentieth century and that shadows the twenty-first: including the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Cultural Revolution, apartheid, repression in Latin America, genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, and 9/11.

The texts are arranged thematically, rather than by event, in order to highlight the shared themes of memory expressed across culture and geography. Starting with visceral reactions to a violent event, chapters proceed through recognitions of loss, and move into statements of public remembrance through which future generations attempt to understand the impact of past violence.

The spirit of this sweeping and important anthology is captured in the prologue by Seamus Heaney, who writes, “Much of the literature of the past century is a de profundis on behalf of the desperate and the deprived in gulag or ghetto or township or camp, but in spite of its desolate content that literature has a positive influence; it has had the paradoxical effect of raising spirits and creating hope.”

Clifford Chanin is the founder and president of the Legacy Project. Previously, he was associate director of Arts and Humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation. 

Aili McConnon is the literary editor of the Legacy Project. Her writing has appeared The New York Times, The Guardian, Business Week Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and New York Magazine.