Memories in Translation - Denys Johnson-Davies

Memories in Translation is a very casual memoir, focussed mainly on Johnson-Davies’ work as a translator of Arabic literature — a small (though very significant) part of what appears to have been a very unusual life. Johnson-Davies begins by recounting how he came to study Arabic — an unlikely chain of events that included leaving boarding school at age fourteen because they wouldn’t let him play squash. And Arabic was an odd choice for someone who wasn’t particularly fond of Latin and Greek, but that’s what he wound up studying at Cambridge…..