London. Thames & Hudson. 2021. 320 pages.

“UN MIRACLE D'AMOUR,” SAID French writer Paul Valéry in 1925 about the existence of PEN International, founded in 1921 by English novelist and poet Catharine Amy Dawson Scott with the intention of creating a club where men and women writers could meet and discuss literature and the ways in which they could connect with fellow writers around the world. Valéry’s phrase also applies to this richly illustrated publication created to celebrate PEN’s centenary. The two editors and five authors, aided by archivists, researchers, members, individual PEN centers, and others as outlined in the acknowledgments, clearly spent a lot of time finding, compiling, and selecting around five hundred photos and documents as well as composing related captions and text. The resulting story contains as much depth and complexity as PEN’s five highlighted committees/areas of action, which I’ll discuss later. It’s a lot to take in, and while certain section titles, keys, captions, and font color choices could be improved to help reading ease and navigation, this book succeeds overall at dramatically immersing the reader in the history of this organization dedicated to international literature and freedom of expression. Moreover, it does so by operating at three levels: narrative, archival record, and specific PEN cases and stories.