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On Proust, Translation, Foreign Languages, and the City of Arles
by Lydia Davis
A collection of essays on translation, foreign languages, Proust, and one French city, from the master short-fiction writer and acclaimed translator Lydia Davis.
Lydia Davis, who has been called "a magician of self-consciousness" by Jonathan Franzen and "the best prose stylist in America" by Rick Moody, gathered a selection of her essays for the first time in 2019 with Essays One. Now, Davis continues her non-fiction project with Essays Two.
This edition will, for the first time, collect Lydia Davis's essays and talks on the art of translation, the experience of translating Proust, Flaubert and Michel Leiris, learning a foreign language through reading, and an extended immersion in the city of Arles.
Davis, winner of the Man Booker International Prize for her fiction and finalist for the National Book Award, showcases her sharp literary mind and invaluable insight in this new collection of her nonfiction works.
"In this riveting and erudite collection, Davis documents the adventures and challenges of her work as a translator...Davis is the kind of intelligent and attentive reader a book is lucky to find. Readers, in turn, are lucky to have this collection, a worthy addition to the Davis canon." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Davis is known for both her precise, uber-concise short fiction and her translations of Proust, Flaubert, and others. In this immersive collection, she offers a second (following Essays One) in-depth exploration of foreign languages and the art of translation...For those wondering what translators do and how they do it, this collection is a must." - Kirkus Reviews
"While writing about writing can sometimes wander into theoretical, navel-gazing territory, Davis's approach here is thrillingly concrete. Several pieces describe, in vivid, granular detail, her process for translating the first volume of Proust. She pops the hood and lets us see how the literary gears turn." - Cornelia Channing, Vulture
This information about Essays Two was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lydia Davis is the author of The End of the Story: A Novel and several story collections. Her collection Varieties of Disturbance: Stories was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Award of Merit Medal, and was named a Chevalier of the Order of the Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and her translations of modern writers, including Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Marcel Proust. Lydia Davis is the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize.
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He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming
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