PEN International An Ilustrated History

Edited by Carles Torner and Jan Martens

Motovoun Group of International Publishers

Foreword

PEN has helped writers who have risked losing their families, homeland, livelihood, freedom

and very often — too often — their lives to tell the truth. This means that, on so many levels, PEN

works to protect all knowledge. This, in past times or in our times, is extraordinary.

Established to promote friendship, intellectual cooperation and exchange between writers, PEN

is now the world's largest and oldest literary organisation and a champion of translation and

linguistic rights. Today, as before, PEN sees literature as playing a significant role in developing

mutual understanding, dialogue and peaceful debate. The opening sentence of the PEN Charter

speaks to this ideal: “Literature knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among

people in spite of political or international upheavals? While PEN originally stood for Poets,

Playwrights, Essayists, Editors, Novelists”, the membership has grown to include a broader

understanding of the term “writer” and welcomes publishers, translators, bloggers, academics

and journalists. PEN works to both protect freedom of expression and honour the transforma-

tive experience of literature and telling stories.

From opposing book burning and the persecution of writers in Nazi Germany to supporting

dissident writers during the Cold War and campaigning for imprisoned writers in China today,

PEN has worked to safeguard against all kinds of censorship and self-censorship. This book tells

the story of PEN members all over the globe who believe in a personal responsibility to help one

another, care for a stranger, challenge repressive governments and keep vigil outside of prisons.

It is impossible to know how many writers PEN has saved or helped over these 100 years, but

there is no doubt that a world without PEN would be even more fragile and less hopeful. One of

PEN's very first cases was that of the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, anditis right

and good to start this book on PEN's history with his words: “The artist, and particularly the

poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word [... and] must heed only the call that

arises within [...] from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice

of love and the voice of art-

Jennifer Clement

President

‘PEN International: An Illustrated History’ awarded Best Book of the Year at Frankfurt by the Motovun Group of Publishers, 2021