Clearly parochialism is uncool, particularly for uber-cool global storytelling phenomenon the Moth and its latest 50-story collection, All These Wonders, but Karen Gearon's account of the Dunnes Stores anti-apartheid strikers of the 1980s shines like a beautiful deed in a brutal world. Young till workers in their 20s, they didn't even know how to pronounce apartheid never mind its ferocious realities hundreds of miles away, yet they unwittingly became actors, then honoured guests, in the huge unfolding scene. Bravo! Another star, Suki Kim, went undercover in North Korea, "a world where all citizens are complicit in the deprivation of their own humanity" – a chilling summation of dictatorship. There's a knockout story from ex-child soldier Ishmael Bea, a beauty called The House of Mourning by Kate Braestrup; and one from Irish resident Tomi Reichental about taking a shower in Bergen-Belsen with his mother – for real. Not all the stories work. One critic dismissed a quarter as "humblebrag", a terrific insult but a bit harsh. Literature they are not. In fact the ones that work best have the least art, the most heart.
