For German literary critic Walter Benjamin, translation belongs to the ‘afterlife’ of a work, by which he means the ‘transformation and a renewal of something living’. In this sense, a new translation extends this afterlife, renews and sustains it. This does not mean every new translation is worthy of the original, but it does bring it back into the light.

It has been twenty years since Penguin released new translations of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. For the first time, the novel’s seven volumes were translated not by one but by several translators, under the guiding hand of a general editor. The same approach has been taken for the new Oxford World’s Classics translation, with Brian Nelson translating the first and last volumes and acting as general editor. Nelson is an experienced translator who is best known for his translations of Émile Zola.