Cross-cultural communication （135）　

135) La peste and L'etranger
The titles this time are The Plague (La Peste ) and The Stranger (L’etranger). Yes, those are Camus's two masterpieces. The Plague became a bestseller in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was one of those who contributed to this phenomenon. I had read the Japanese translation when I was a med student, but I had forgotten most of the plot, so in 2021, I ordered the original book from Amazon and started reading it. After quitting my office practice in 2016, I had more free time, and since I had read a few French novels before, I approached it casually. However, The Plague was, to put it mildly, quite challenging. The protagonist, Rieux, is a doctor, so the theme of infectious diseases meant that the descriptions of medical examinations and symptoms were not a problem. However, the novel has no chapters and continues for 200 pages without interruption. The psychological descriptions of Rieux and other characters are extremely abstract and use a lot of euphemisms. Even ordinary descriptions are long sentences filled with difficult vocabulary, and I almost gave up several times. On several occasions, I ended up flipping through the relevant pages of the Shincho-sha Bunko edition in Japanese at a bookstore. However, by the time I finished reading it, I felt a great sense of emotion and accomplishment. This may be due to the bias of him being a Nobel Prize-winning author. There were also practical benefits. At the time, I was struggling with a COVID-19 cluster at the nursing home where I serve as medical director, and the novel provided me with mental support.

After finishing The Plague, I gained a little confidence in tackling Camus and began reading another of his masterpieces, The Stranger, in the original French. I had read a translation of this during my student days, and compared to The Plague, it was significantly shorter, so I vaguely remembered the plot. However, I began reading the French version cautiously, still haunted by the trauma of The Plague. After reading about ten pages, I was surprised to find it surprisingly easy to read. Compared to The Plague, which took me eight months to finish, The Stranger, though only a short story of about 70 pages, took me just one month to complete. For a moment, I thought maybe my French had improved significantly after finishing the challenging The Plague, but upon reflection, that didn't seem likely. First, The Stranger is divided into chapters, making it easier for the reader to follow the story. Additionally, the sentences are short, and there is a lot of dialogue. The content of the dialogue is also mostly everyday, concrete topics, which made it easier to understand in French. The protagonist, Meursault, is an ordinary French worker who can hardly be called an intellectual, and the other characters are also French people of the same social class. The novel's theme is the absurd murder committed by this ordinary Frenchman and its aftermath.

Reading these two of Camus's masterpieces back-to-back was not only helpful for studying French but also left me deeply impressed by the skill with which he conveys his own ideas through his novels.

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