ABSTRACT
This essay traces various cultural translations of Liao Yiwu’s poetry into English and German. It foregrounds a tight entanglement of literature and politics that starts with the suppression of the 1989 Protest Movement in China and extends to a dynamic engendered by publishers, prize-giving bodies, and prestigious cultural figures abroad. It reveals the complexities of communicating trauma between East and West and the gripping textual traces that are left in the process.
