This study examines censorship in the case of the first even Brazilian book club, the Clube do Livro (1943-1989), examining extracts of translations of Gargantua (François Rabelais), Hard Times (Charles Dickens) and The Professor (Charlotte Brontë) that were cut. The article proposes that the main elements that were censored were scatological, sexually explicit, political, religious or racist. However, censorship in translations is never totally efficient, and the Clube do Livro was able to publish translations of Rumanian works which had a strong socialist message in the toughest years of the right-wing military dictatorship (1968-1976).