Shelfology Book Pairing

A Novel

by Kurt Vonnegut

“Marvelous . . . wheels out all the complaints about America and makes them seem fresh, funny, outrageous, hateful and lovable.”—The New York Times In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth. “Free-wheeling, wild and great . . . uniquely Vonnegut.”—Publishers Weekly

A new translation by Laura Marris

by Albert Camus

“We can finally read the work as Camus meant it to be read. Laura Marris’s new translation of The Plague is, quite simply, the translation we need to have.” —Los Angeles Review of Books 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 to a new generation of readers. • "A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair." —The Washington Post 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.