Translation can be dangerous and subversive from a literary perspective. It can also take on a political or ideological dimension. Two translators of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses were attacked, one fatally, while the Turkish translator and publisher of William S. Burroughs’s The Soft Machine were put on trial. In other far less visible cases, translations have been suppressed for the voices and ideas they convey, and not for any lack of literary or cultural merit.

Join Paris Review poetry editor Robyn Creswell and translators Bonnie Huie and Sara Khalili for a discussion on texts they’ve translated that are considered blasphemous, obscene, or otherwise dangerous to offer their views on the place where art meets politics.

More information on the panel can be found here.

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