Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was born in Rouen, France, and was brought to popular attention when Madame Bovary was deemed immoral by the French government.
Lydia Davis (translator) is a MacArthur Fellow, National Book Award finalist, and Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters and was awarded the 2003 French-American Foundation Translation Prize for her translation of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way. She lives near Albany, New York.
"[Flaubert's] masterwork has been given the English translation it
deserves."
-Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times Book Review "[A] brilliant
new translation."
-Lee Siegel, The New York Observer "[Davis] has a finer ear for the
natural cadences of English, in narrative and dialogue, than any of
her predecessors, and there are many moments in her Madame Bovary
when one pauses to admire how clean and spare a sentence seems by
comparison with its earlier translated versions. . . . Only a very
good writer indeed could have written it. . . . The bones of the
original French show clearly through her English, and the rawness
of her translation is, on the whole, invigorating."
-Jonathan Raban, The New York Review of Books "How tickled Madame
Bovary herself would be by the latest homage paid to her. . . . I'm
grateful to Davis for luring me back to Madame Bovary and for
giving us a version which strikes me as elegant and alive."
-Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air "Flaubert's obsessive
masterpiece finally gets the obsessive translation it
deserves."
-New York "Davis is the best fiction writer ever to translate the
novel. . . . [Her] work shares the Flaubertian virtues of
compression, irony and an extreme sense of control. . . . Davis's
Madame Bovary is a linguistically careful version, in the modern
style, rendered into an unobtrusively American English."
-Julian Barnes, London Review of Books "Davis captures with
precision the sensitivity of the novel's language. . . . [Her]
version . . . ultimately demonstrates her own empathy with
Emma."
-The New Republic "At last, the real Madame Bovary . . . The
publication of the Davis version is an event. . . . Davis has come
closer than any previous translator to capturing Flaubert's style
and content accurately for English-language readers. . . . Her
version benefits from her finesse as a writer and seems fresh and
different compared to other translations."
-The American Spectator "Davis has produced a very fine
[translation that] displays a cool detachment not at all dissimilar
to Flaubert's own."
-The New Criterion "Davis [is] operating in top form in her new
translation of Madame Bovary. . . . I was struck delirious by the
force of Flaubert's writing, and the precision (the perfection) of
Davis's translation."
-Macy Halford, The New Yorker's Book Bench "Davis's edition should
bring a new generation to Flaubert's classic of bourgeois ennui and
adultery."
-Newsday "A new translation that spans the ages [and] hews as close
to the original as may be possible. . . . Davis's translation
strives for-and largely achieves-the flavor of Flaubert's realism.
. . . It provides such an unfussy, straightforward narrative that
it underscores how truly modern a writer Flaubert was."
-BookPage "Davis has forged a masterpiece out of a masterpiece. . .
. This Madame Bovary is a veritable page-turner. . . . In French,
the story leapt out at me like a hallucinatory Technicolor poem; in
the lapidary English of Lydia Davis, I receive the same frisson of
recognition-that the novel still lives. . . . Thanks to Lydia
Davis, the book remains: a great, companionlike, eternal gilded
mirror of Flaubert's world."
-Neil Baldwin, The Faster Times "Davis . . . does a brilliant job
of capturing Flaubert's diamond-hard style. . . . Davis's English
prose has precisely the qualities she notes that Flaubert was
striving for in French; it is 'clear and direct, economical and
precise.' This translation reminds you what an aggressively modern
writer Flaubert is."
-Kirkus Reviews "[Davis] is one of the most innovative prose
stylists of our time, and thus an excellent match for Flaubert's
masterpiece. Flaubert's sentences are certainly sonorous in French,
and the sentences in this translation reveal a similar attention to
sound. . . . We are in debt to Flaubert for his influence on much
of the writing we have today; the extent of our debt has never been
so clear."
-The Believer Acclaim for Lydia Davis and her translation of
Swann's Way "[Her] capacity to make language unleash entire states
of existence reveals the extent to which Davis's fiction is
influenced by her work as a translator."
-The New York Times "Few writers now working make the words on the
page matter more."
-Jonathan Franzen "Davis is the best prose stylist in America."
-Rick Moody "Swann's Way is transformed into something even more
enchanting in Lydia Davis's new translation."
-Vanity Fair "Davis is closer, much closer, to Proust's French. . .
. [Her] Swann's Way is one of those translations . . . that put the
question of languages out of your mind, and leave you only with
questions of language."
-The Village Voice "Accessible and faithful to Proust. Davis
replicates the hesitations and digressions, the backward looks and
forward glances that swell Proust's sentences and send them
cascading to their conclusion-without sacrificing the natural air
of his style."
-Los Angeles Times Book Review "Davis is an extraordinary
technician of language, capable of revealing elusive human
tendencies through the most unusual means."
-Bookforum "[Davis] commands language and imagery, playing the
reader like a master."
-Los Angeles Times "The subtleties of the French language, in spite
of their difficulty, hold no secrets from you. . . . No literary
genre deters you. You helped to make known to the English-speaking
public some of the finest French literature of the century. . . .
You have found a way not only to put your many talents at the
service of the French language and culture, but also to place your
stamp on the literary legacy of our times."
-French Insignia of the Order of Arts and Letters citation
"[Flaubert''s] masterwork has been given the English translation it
deserves."
-Kathryn Harrison, "The New York Times Book Review"
"[A] brilliant new translation."
-Lee Siegel, "The New York Observer"
"[Davis] has a finer ear for the natural cadences of English, in
narrative and dialogue, than any of her predecessors, and there are
many moments in her "Madame Bovary" when one pauses to admire how
clean and spare a sentence seems by comparison with its earlier
translated versions. . . . Only a very good writer indeed could
have written it. . . . The bones of the original French show
clearly through her English, and the rawness of her translation is,
on the whole, invigorating."
-Jonathan Raban, "The New York Review of Books"
"How tickled Madame Bovary herself would be by the latest homage
paid to her. . . . I''m grateful to Davis for luring me back to
"Madame Bovary" and for giving us a version which strikes me as
elegant and alive."
-Maureen Corrigan, NPR''s "Fresh Air"
"Flaubert''s obsessive masterpiece finally gets the obsessive
translation it deserves."
-"New York"
"Davis is the best fiction writer ever to translate the novel. . .
. [Her] work shares the Flaubertian virtues of compression, irony
and an extreme sense of control. . . . Davis''s "Madame Bovary" is
a linguistically careful version, in the modern style, rendered
into an unobtrusively American English."
-Julian Barnes, "London Review of Books"
"Davis captures with precision the sensitivity of the novel''s
language. . . . [Her] version . . . ultimately demonstrates her own
empathy with Emma."
-"The New Republic"
"At last, the real "Madame Bovary" . . . The publication of the
Davis version is an event. . . . Davis has come closer than any
previous translator to capturing Flaubert''s style and content
accurately for English-language readers. . . . Her version benefits
from her finesse as a writer and seems fresh and differ
Acclaim for Lydia Davis and her translation of "Swann's Way"
"[Her] capacity to make language unleash entire states of existence
reveals the extent to which Davis's fiction is influenced by her
work as a translator."
-"The New York Times"
"Few writers now working make the words on the page matter
more."
-Jonathan Franzen
"Davis is the best prose stylist in America."
-Rick Moody
""Swann's Way" is transformed into something even more enchanting
in Lydia Davis's new translation."
-"Vanity Fair"
"Davis is closer, "much" closer, to Proust's French. . . . [Her]
"Swann's Way" is one of those translations . . . that put the
question of "languages" out of your mind, and leave you only with
questions of "language.""
-"The Village Voice"
"Accessible and faithful to Proust. Davis replicates the
hesitations and digressions, the backward looks and forward glances
that swell Proust's sentences and send them cascading to their
conclusion-without s
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