Lydia Davis is a miniaturist with sizable intentions. Her micro-stories, many just a couple of lines, are constrained in length only; their subject matter might be anything that takes her interest, whether a builder up his ladder, a moment of marital disharmony, a tin of ham or the inevitable approach of death.
Her fans are legion – among them Ali Smith, Colm Tóibín and Dave Eggers – and she has won many honours, including the International Booker prize a decade ago and being awarded a MacArthur fellowship, often referred to as a “the genius grant”, in 2003. Her impressive back catalogue – several story collections and a single novel, The End of the Story – extends beyond her fiction to two widely praised books of essays and a whole other life as a translator of Proust, Flaubert and the Dutch writer AL Snijders.
