A brand new collection of short fiction from Lydia Davis, 'a trailblazer in the world of short-form prose' New Yorker
Lydia Davis Book order
Lydia Davis is an acclaimed fiction writer and translator, renowned for her extraordinarily brief yet brilliantly inventive short stories. Her work explores how language itself can captivate and how the unsaid can hold a reader's interest. Davis reveals previously invisible details of life, offering readers new sources of philosophical insight and beauty. Her unique style and approach to form have influenced a generation of writers who appreciate her ability to push the boundaries of short fiction.






- 2023
- 2021
"A collection of essays on translation, foreign languages, Proust, and one French city, from the master short-fiction writer and acclaimed translator Lydia Davis. In Essays One, Lydia Davis, who has been called "a magician of self-consciousness" by Jonathan Franzen and "the best prose stylist in America" by Rick Moody, gathered a generous selection of her essays about best writing practices, representations of Jesus, early tourist photographs, and much more. Essays Two collects Davis's writings and talks on her second profession: the art of translation. The award-winning translator from the French reflects on her experience translating Proust. She also makes an extended visit to the French city of Arles, and writes about the varied adventures of learning Norwegian, Dutch, and Spanish through reading and translation. Davis, a 2003 MacArthur Fellow and the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize for her fiction, here focuses her unique intelligence and idiosyncratic ways of understanding on the endlessly complex relations between languages. Together with Essays One, this provocative and delightful volume cements her status as one of our most original and beguiling writers"--Publisher's description
- 2020
The Believer, a ten-time National Magazine Award finalist, is a bimonthly literature, arts, and culture magazine based at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute, a department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In each issue, readers will find journalism, essays, intimate interviews, an expansive comics section, poetry, and on occasion, delightful and unexpected bonus items. Our poetry section is curated by Jericho Brown, Kristen Radtke selects our comics, and Joshua Wolf Shenk is our editor-in-chief. Issues feature a column by Nick Hornby, in which he discusses the things he's been reading, as well as a comedy advice column.
- 2019
Essays One
- 528 pages
- 19 hours of reading
A selection of essays on writing and reading by the master short-fiction writer Lydia Davis Lydia Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Jonathan Franzen has called her “a magician of self-consciousness,” while Rick Moody hails her as "the best prose stylist in America." And for Claire Messud, “Davis's signal gift is to make us feel alive.” Best known for her masterful short stories and translations, Davis’s gifts extend equally to her nonfiction. In Essays I: Reading and Writing, Davis has, for the first time, gathered a selection of essays, commentaries, and lectures composed over the past five decades. In this first of two volumes, her subjects range from her earliest influences to her favorite short stories, from John Ashbery’s translation of Rimbaud to Alan Cote’s painting, and from the Shepherd’s Psalm to early tourist photographs. On display is the development and range of one of the sharpest, most capacious minds writing today.
- 2018
The Stripper, The Drug Dealer & The Bishop: Three Husbands, Same Spirit
- 224 pages
- 8 hours of reading
The narrative explores the harrowing experiences of a mother who confronts unimaginable trauma, including the betrayal of a partner and the violent realities of life intertwined with crime. It delves into themes of survival, faith, and redemption as the author reflects on her journey through personal hells, ultimately highlighting the transformative power of faith and divine intervention in overcoming life's darkest moments.
- 2016
Selected stories by 'literary genius' Lucia Berlin.
- 2015
Can't and won't
- 304 pages
- 11 hours of reading
'Bloomington- Now that I have been here a while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before.' 'Delightful, deeply moving, deliciously humorous, beautiful and surprising.' Financial Times'One of America's finest practitioners of prose . . . brimming with renewed inventiveness and the ability to assault readers with an upped dosage of wit, pathos and insight. Stunning, mesmerising.' Herald'A chance to revel . . . good, funny, remarkable.' Observer'Take these writings as they come, slowly. You will go back to a little gem that has wormed its way into your mind and stuck there, and discover that it is indeed a little gem, which sparkles a different way each time and flashes with a brief beauty of hidden meaning.' Susan Hill, Spectator'Davis can invest descriptions of everyday events with startling reserves of emotion. She has a brilliant eye for the surprising, vibrant detail.'Sunday Times'A clever and refreshing observation of the world around us.' Stylist'One of the unique creations of American literature.' Prospect
- 2014
On the border of Scotland and England beginning in 1898, two sheep farmers and their sheepdogs engage in a years-long battle to prove their superiority in handling sheep--a battle which must end in death
- 2014
Can't and Won't. Kanns nicht und wills nicht, englische Ausgabe
- 304 pages
- 11 hours of reading
NATIONAL BESTSELLER The New York Times • Los Angeles Times • The Boston Globe Her stories may be literal one-liners: the entirety of "Bloomington" reads, "Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before." Or they may be lengthier investigations of the havoc wreaked by the most mundane disruptions to routine: in "A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates," a professor receives a gift of thirty-two small chocolates and is paralyzed by the multitude of options she imagines for their consumption. The stories may appear in the form of letters of complaint; they may be extracted from Flaubert's correspondence; or they may be inspired by the author's own dreams, or the dreams of friends. What does not vary throughout Can't and Won't, Lydia Davis's fifth collection of stories, is the power of her finely honed prose. Davis is sharply observant; she is wry or witty or poignant. Above all, she is refreshing. Davis writes with bracing candor and sly humor about the quotidian, revealing the mysterious, the foreign, the alienating, and the pleasurable within the predictable patterns of daily life.
- 2013
Samuel Johnson Is Indignant
- 216 pages
- 8 hours of reading
From one of our most imaginative and inventive writers, a crystalline collection of perfectly modulated, sometimes harrowing and often hilarious investigations into the multifaceted ways in which human beings perceive each other and themselves. A couple suspects their friends think them boring; a woman resolves to see herself as nothing but then concludes she's set too high a goal; and a funeral home receives a letter rebuking it for linguistic errors. Lydia Davis once again proves in the words of the Los Angeles Times "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction."

