The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis is one of our most original and influential writers. She has been called "an American virtuoso of the short story form" (Salon) and "one of the quiet giants . . . of American fiction" (Los Angeles Times Book Review).

Now, for the first time, Davis's short stories will be collected in one volume, from the groundbreaking Break It Down(1986) to the 2007 National Book Award nominee - Varieties of Disturbance.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is an event in American letters. Lydia Davis is the author of one novel and seven 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 Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Marcel Proust.

“Among the true originals of contemporary American short fiction.” -San Francisco Chronicle

“A body of work probably unique in American writing . . . I suspect that The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis will in time be seen as one of the great, strange American literary contributions.” -James Wood, The New Yorker

“Davis is a magician of self-consciousness. Few writers now working make the words on the page matter more.” -Jonathan Franzen

“Lydia Davis is one of the best writers in America. . . . She is the funniest writer I know."-Vince Passaro, O, The Oprah Magazine

“Magnificent . . . Davis has made one of the great books in recent literature, equal parts horse sense and heartache.”-Dan Chiasson, The New York Review of Books

“All who know Davis’s work probably remember their first time reading it . . . Blows the roof off of so many of our assumptions about what constitutes short fiction.” –Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s

“Sharp, deft, ironic, understated, and consistently surprising.” -Joyce Carol Oates

“The best prose stylist in America.” -Rick Moody