When the pandemic prevented Professor Anna Monardo from visiting her family in Calabria she found an unexpected opportunity for virtual travel to Europe. Anna became one of 122 participants involved in producing an online English translation of L’Avventura, a French comic-strip blog in Le Monde. Created by Italian cartoonist Fiamma Luzzati, the blog depicts the worldwide pandemic from a variety of viewpoints.

Anna’s group, which consists of two students from England, a student in Bucharest, and a teacher in Sicily, is translating panels depicting the life of an I.C.U. doctor in Milan during Italy’s Covid-19 crisis. The project concludes in August with group presentations from around the world. According to Anna, the collaboration opened up her locked-down world and gave her a wider vision. She also found that doing literary translation again after many years refreshed her approach to her own writing.