Translating “The Plague” During a Pandemic: An Interview With Laura Marris

"The Plague"

Literary translation isn’t solely a desk job. In December 2019, a few months after agreeing to translate Albert Camus’s The Plague, Laura Marris traveled to Algeria, the author’s native country and the setting for his powerful portrait of a city enduring a deadly epidemic. Accompanied by Alice Kaplan, the author of the 2016 book Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic, Marris walked the same streets as Dr. Bernard Rieux, the stalwart hero of The Plague. “That really helped the book,” she told me, “just in terms of seeing the landscape and getting the right names for trees, things like that. I think it’s always helpful as a translator to see the place where a book is set.” 

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