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Shop nowEssays One
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Learn moreA 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 One, 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.
Lydia Davis is the author of The End of the Story: A Novel and several story collections, including Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is also the acclaimed translator of Swann's Way and Madame Bovary, both of which were awarded the French American Foundation Translation Prize. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, published in 2009, was described by James Wood in the New Yorker as a "grand cumulative achievement." She is the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize.
Bringing the experience of nearly four decades of theater, film, and television acting to audiobook narration, AudioFile Earphones Award winner Janet Metzger has deftly interpreted the many-faceted characters of Southern fiction writers such as Sarah Addison Allen, Patti Callahan Henry, and Kristy Woodson Harvey. As an award-winning documentary narrator and a master teacher at Emory University School of Law, where she teaches storytelling and persuasion, Janet brings both warmth and authority to nonfiction as well. Whether she is narrating a Southern romance, a heroine's journey, or an innovative take on business, Janet's warm and inviting voice will draw you into the story.