Lyndsey Stonebridge presents a new way to think about the relationship between literature and human rights that challenges the idea that empathy inspires action. This slim but comprehensively researched, rigorously argued volume tackles human rights, literature, moralities, philosophy, aesthetics as well as our discourses about these in a complex, nuanced and yet completely accessible way. It makes for a challenging, thought-provoking, illuminating, and at times discomfiting read. This volume -to borrow from Stonebridge herself -is a must read for lawyers and philosophers, ideologues and academics, to thinkers, writers, teachers, readers, artists, activists, survivors and indeed each one of us who has ever lost themselves to a story that may be our own or entirely of another.