Pandemic Literature
Rowan and I reluctantly came to recognize the need for this page. We have fielded so many inquiries from customers about epidemics, pandemics, plagues, and the science behind viral “jumps” between nonhuman to human species that we thought we need to put in one place the references we offer. Fear of the invisible threat extends into the past, whether history or fiction. The present fear looms large. Being human, as Robert Burns pointed out in his poem to the mousie whose life was upset by the plow, means to project the fear into the future, which explains our rich selection of plague-haunted science fiction/horror fiction. Many smart people and good writers have devoted thought and art to considering these fears, and we invite you to calm and measure your own in such good company.
The Plague [a new translation by Laura Marris]
The Plague [a new translation by Laura Marris]
The first new translation of The Plague to be published in the United States in more than seventy years, bringing the Nobel Prize winner’s iconic novel (“A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair.” —The Washington Post) to a new generation of readers.
The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation, and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror.
An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France’s suffering under the Nazi occupation, as well as a timeless story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence. In this fresh yet careful translation, award-winning translator Laura Marris breathes new life into Albert Camus’s ever-resonant tale. Restoring the restrained lyricism of the original French text, and liberating it from the archaisms and assumptions of the previous English translation, Marris grants English readers the closest access we have ever had to the meaning and searing beauty of The Plague.
This updated edition promises to add relevance and urgency to a classic novel of twentieth-century literature.
Laura Marris is a writer and translator. She holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.F.A. from Boston University. She has written prose for The New York Times, The Common, The Believer, The Point, and Asymptote. Her poems have appeared in the North American Review, The Yale Review, No Tokens, The Cortland Review, The Volta, Prelude, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by a MacDowell fellowship and a Daniel Varoujan Prize. With Alice Kaplan, she is the co-author of a book of essays called States of Plague: Reading Albert Camus in a Pandemic (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Her first solo-authored book, The Age of Loneliness, will be published by Graywolf in 2024.
Her translations include Albert Camus’s The Plague (Knopf). She has also translated Louis Guilloux's novel Blood Dark (New York Review Books), Paol Keineg's Triste Tristan and Other Poems (with Rosmarie Waldrop for Burning Deck Press), Geraldine Schwarz’s Those Who Forget (Scribner), Christophe Boltanski’s The Safe House (University of Chicago Press), Jean-Yves Frétigné’s Antonio Gramsci: To Live is to Resist (University of Chicago Press), as well as a Proust comic book and experimental translation projects for Asymptote and The Brooklyn Rail. Books she has translated have been shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the Baille-Gifford Prize in the UK, the Mark Lynton History Prize from the Lukas Prizes, and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize.