Lydia Davis

The first and only novel by one of the world's greatest short story writers. Mislabeled boxes, confusing notes, wrong turnings - such are the obstacles in the way of the unnamed narrator of The End of the Story as she organises her memories of a love affair into a novel. With compassion, wit, and what seems to be candour, she...

The definitive collection of stories by one of the most important and exciting fiction writers of our time. Remarkable. Some of the most moving fiction - on death, marriage, children - of recent years. To read The Collected Stories is to be reminded of the grand, echoing mind-chambers created by Sebald or recent Coetzee. A writer of vast intelligence and...

A sparkling collection of pithy wit and formal inventiveness from one of the greatest short-story writers alive. With titles like A Story of Stolen Salamis, Letters to a Frozen Pea Manufacturer, A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates, and Can't and Won't, the stories in this collection illuminate particular moments in ordinary lives and find in them the...

An illuminating reflection on the creative process from acclaimed fiction writer, essayist, and translator Lydia Davis When asked why she writes, Lydia Davis confesses that the question makes her uncomfortable. Maybe she would rather not know. Instead, Davis considers how she writes her stories, how other writers write, and what insights the how might provide into the why. In this...

A crystalline collection of literary essays from the Man Booker International Prize-winning author of Can't and Won't. Lydia Davis's writing is a masterclass in control: wry, lucid, penetrating, every word placed deliberately. Here she presents a dazzling collection of literary essays, each one as beautifully formed, thought-provoking, playful and illuminating as her critically acclaimed short fiction. Ranging across her many...

Lydia Davis returns with a timeless collection of essays on literature and language. Precise, concentrated, lyrical. No one writes like Lydia Davis, and everyone should read her — Hanif Kureishi A writer as mighty as Kafka, as subtle as Flaubert, and as epoch-making, in her own way, as Proust — Ali Smith Lydia Davis gathered a selection of her non-fiction...

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR: FICTION 'A trailblazer in the world of short-form prose' New Yorker Lydia Davis is a virtuoso at detecting the seemingly casual, inconsequential surprises of daily life and pinning them for inspection. In Our Strangers, conversations are overheard and misheard, a special delivery letter is mistaken for a rare white butterfly, toddlers learning to...

'A trailblazer in the world of short-form prose' New Yorker Lydia Davis is a virtuoso at detecting the seemingly casual, inconsequential surprises of daily life and pinning them for inspection. In Our Strangers, conversations are overheard and misheard, a special delivery letter is mistaken for a rare white butterfly, toddlers learning to speak identify a ping-pong ball as an egg,...