Essays Two

As a translator, Davis is known for fidelity, clarity, and, in the case of Proust, decluttering . . . Yet the collection is not, mostly, about problems with other people’s translations but the process of working on her own – a kind of shop talk we’re allowed to listen in on . . . Davis once said in an interview that she would find it ‘almost morally or ethically wrong’ to deliberately impose her own style on a translation. Her scrupulousness is, perhaps, a counterbalance to the translator’s power, and to the peremptory instinct that prompts translation in the first place

Elaine Blair, New York Review of Books

Whatever the topic, Davis is always superb company: erudite, adventurous, surprising . . . Davis extracts endless thrills from the painstaking process [of translation]. Her essays do a beautiful job of transmitting that satisfaction to the reader . . . A book that contains an incredible amount of life-enhancing morsels

Molly Young, New York Times

When Davis breaks down the work of writing, she can be very funny, often at her own expense . . . The pieces in Essays Two brim with daring experiments . . . There is an element of knight-errantry, quest, romantic fatalism as she pursues the elusive foreign language, and often a distant century

Ange Mlinko, London Review of Books

We come away from Essays Two with renewed respect for a writer whose grasp of languages is profound, and whose capacity to shape-shift from one to another is quite exceptional

Times Literary Supplement

[Essays Two is] a guide to new dimensions of thought. Davis makes translation seem like a sublime exercise of mind and self

The Boston Globe