Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis is an American writer and translator known for compressed short fiction, including very brief stories, and translations of French literature.

Flash fiction: A form of fiction that tells a story in a very short space. Many of Davis’s brief pieces test how little space a story can occupy.
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis: A collection bringing together Lydia Davis’s short fiction published through 2008. This volume offers a wide view of her stories across several decades.
Gustave Flaubert: A French novelist whose works include Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education. Davis translated Madame Bovary and has written about Flaubert’s precision and style.
International Booker Prize: A literary award recognizing fiction translated into English and its translator. Davis received the 2013 award for her translation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
Short story: A prose narrative shorter and more concentrated than a novel. Davis’s fiction stretches the short story toward unusual brevity and compression.
Can’t and Won’t: A 2014 collection of Lydia Davis’s stories, fables, and other short prose. Its varied forms show her range beyond conventional short stories.
Marcel Proust: A French novelist best known for In Search of Lost Time. Her translation of Swann’s Way brought her into close contact with Proust’s prose.
Man Booker International Prize: A former international literary award recognizing a writer’s body of work in translation. Davis won the 2013 prize, bringing her own writing and translation to wider notice.
Minimalism: An artistic approach that uses restraint and economy to focus attention on essential elements. Her spare sentences make omissions and small shifts carry unusual weight.
Madame Bovary: Gustave Flaubert’s 1856 novel about Emma Bovary and her dissatisfaction with provincial life. Davis’s English translation brought renewed attention to Flaubert’s sentence-level style.

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