‘Anglophones of the next century will be deeply in [Dr Screech’s] debt’ – Gore Vidal in the Times Literary Supplement

‘Screech’s fine version . . . must surely serve as the definitive English Montaigne.’ – A.C. Grayling

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was born in 1533, the eldest child of a family that owned estates near Bordeaux. Object of a pedagogical experiment that saw him spending early infancy with a peasant family, then learning Latin as his mother tongue, Montaigne trained and practiced as a lawyer in Bordeaux and from 1561–3 was counsellor to the court of Charles IX, just as the religious conflict between the Calvinist Huguenots and the conservative Catholic league was growing intense. Distressed by the death of his close friend Étienne de la Boétie in 1563, and troubled by the sectarian wars, in 1571 Montaigne withdrew to his family estates where, over twenty years – interrupted only by a spell as Mayor of Bordeaux – he put together 1,300 pages of reflections, or essais, that constitute one of the most extraordinary bodies of thought in European history.

Born in Manchester in 1954, Tim Parks moved to Italy in 1981. Author of four bestselling books on Italy and fifteen novels, including the Booker shortlisted Europa, he has translated works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Machiavelli and Leo­pardi. While running a postgraduate degree course in translation at IULM University, Milan, he writes regularly for the LRB and the NYRB. His non-fiction works include Translating Style, a literary approach to translation problems, and most recently Where I’m Reading From, a collection of short essays.

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