Book excerpt: Concert of Voices combines poetry, fiction, drama, and essays in a wide-ranging anthology of world literature in English. The collection includes a number of established writers who despite their great reputations, have often been perceived as standing apart from the main currents of English literature (and have rarely found their way into English Department reading lists). Most selections, though, are by a remarkable range of much less established authors. In addition to the selections, the editor has provided a general introduction and a brief biographical note on each author. "The intention in Concert of Voices is both to provide an alternative text to anthologies of traditional and established writings (in which the new writings in English invariably are displaced and marginalized) and to complement these anthologies. In this regard, the word 'other'—which points up apartness and division—was found wanting and dropped from the provisional main title. Its omission draws attention to a concept (and conviction) operative in the construction of the anthology: despite historical and cultural specificities (the focus of cross-cultural and multicultural studies), commonalities and affinities exist among these writings and between writing on both sides of the hegemonic divide. The anthology, then, is not intended simply as an offering of sociological or anthropological insights into these 'different' peoples. The pieces in Concert of Voices also demonstrate that imaginative writings can evolve from a cocoon of particularities into what can be called—modifying a catch-phrase of certain other disciplines—Literature Without Borders." - from the introduction