Essays Two

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 O...

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.

Lydia Davis is the author of Essays One, a collection of essays on writing, reading, and art. She is also the author of The End of the Story: A Novel and the author of many story collections, including Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award, and, in 2014, Can’t and Won’t. Davis is the acclaimed translator of Swann’s Way and Madame Bovary, both of ...

Lydia Davis is the author of Essays One, a collection of essays on writing, reading, and art. She is also the author of The End of the Story: A Novel and the author of many story collections, including Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award, and, in 2014, Can’t and Won’t. Davis is the acclaimed translator of Swann’s Way and Madame Bovary, both of which were awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis was described by James Wood in The New Yorker as a “grand cumulative achievement.” She is the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize.