Essays

A crystalline collection of literary essays from the Man Booker International Prize-winning author of Can't and Won'tLydia 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 creative influences, including Thomas Pynchon, Michel Leiris, Maurice Blanchot, Lucia Berlin and Joan Mitchell, she returns again and again to her own writing process, joyfully interrogating the limits of literature and the ways in which we can challenge and reinvent it.

“a cornucopia of illuminating and timeless observations on literature, art, and the craft of writing.”

a cornucopia of illuminating and timeless observations on literature, art, and the craft of writing. Publisher's Weekly
The unclassifiable writer and translator's collected nonfiction shows us a brilliant mind at work. The New Republic
the beloved American author reflects on reading and writing in typically funny, incisive and tender style. Stylist
Davis does for the essay what one of her subjects-Rimbaud-did for the prose poem: fires language with emotive, radiant wisdom. Library Journal
masterful, lucid collection . . . no single piece could capture the essence of this extraordinary writer . . . Read these essays: see everything around you in a clear, fresh light New Statesman

Lydia Davis is the author of Collected Stories, one novel and six short story collections, the most recent of which was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and her translations of modern writers, including Gustave Flaubert and Marcel Proust. She won the Man Booker International Prize in 2013.

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