The figure of the literary translator has a checkered history—ambassador and traitor, solitary bookworm and cultural heroine, detective and spy, poet par excellence and self-effacing scribe. Rich, provocative, and rarefied, the practice and history of literary translation has given rise to a host of novels, memoirs, and essays. The star? It’s the literary translator wrestling in the maze of meaning, politics, self-fashioning, and the art of writing.We’ll read from a range of languages and epochs: Larbaud, Cervantes, Borges, Luiselli, Novey, Alameddine, Durante, Kantor.