Our Strangers
- 5 Oct 2023
- 9781805301899
- £20
- 368 pp
- 144×220mm
- 6 Jun 2024
- 9781805302193
- £10.99
- 368 pp
- 130×200mm
- 5 Oct 2023
- 9781805301905
- £8.79
- 368 pp
In a few words
A new collection of short fiction from the critically acclaimed master of the form and winner of the Man Booker International Prize, Lydia Davis
In a few words
A brand new collection of short fiction from Lydia Davis, ‘a trailblazer in the world of short-form prose’ New Yorker
In a few words
A brand new collection of short fiction from Lydia Davis, ‘a trailblazer in the world of short-form prose’ New Yorker
Our Strangers shows Lydia Davis's 'gift for voice' and 'intimate . . . writing'
Chris Power
GuardianThe wonder of Davis’s work is her ability to reveal how close attention - that rarest of commodities in an
attention-starved world - reveals the beauty, sorrow and strangeness of all our seemingly quotidian lives
Erica Wagner
Sunday TimesOur Strangers shows Lydia Davis's 'gift for voice' and 'intimate . . . writing'
Chris Power
GuardianDavis’s ability to observe and celebrate minutiae is as wise and miraculous as ever
Our Strangers shows Lydia Davis's 'gift for voice' and 'intimate . . . writing'
Chris Power
GuardianThe wonder of Davis’s work is her ability to reveal how close attention - that rarest of commodities in an
attention-starved world - reveals the beauty, sorrow and strangeness of all our seemingly quotidian lives
Erica Wagner
Sunday TimesMore about
the book
A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023: FICTION
‘A trailblazer in the world of short-form prose’ New Yorker
Lydia Davis is a virtuoso at detecting the seemingly casual, inconsequential surprises of daily life and pinning them for inspection. In Our Strangers, conversations are overheard and misheard, a special delivery letter is mistaken for a rare white butterfly, toddlers learning to speak identify a ping-pong ball as an egg and mumbled remarks betray a marriage. In the glow of Davis’s keen noticing, strangers can become like family and family like strangers.
Our Strangers is a fascinating collection that confirms the genius of a writer whose every attention is transformative.
More about
the book
A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR: FICTION
‘A trailblazer in the world of short-form prose’ New Yorker
Lydia Davis is a virtuoso at detecting the seemingly casual, inconsequential surprises of daily life and pinning them for inspection. In Our Strangers, conversations are overheard and misheard, a special delivery letter is mistaken for a rare white butterfly, toddlers learning to speak identify a ping-pong ball as an egg and mumbled remarks betray a marriage. In the glow of Davis’s keen noticing, strangers can become like family and family like strangers.
Our Strangers is a fascinating collection that confirms the genius of a writer whose every attention is transformative.
More about
the book
A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR: FICTION
‘A trailblazer in the world of short-form prose’ New Yorker
Lydia Davis is a virtuoso at detecting the seemingly casual, inconsequential surprises of daily life and pinning them for inspection. In Our Strangers, conversations are overheard and misheard, a special delivery letter is mistaken for a rare white butterfly, toddlers learning to speak identify a ping-pong ball as an egg and mumbled remarks betray a marriage. In the glow of Davis’s keen noticing, strangers can become like family and family like strangers.
Our Strangers is a fascinating collection that confirms the genius of a writer whose every attention is transformative.
Davis’s ability to observe and celebrate minutiae is as wise and miraculous as ever
Graceful, funny, awkward, surprising, unlikely, persuasive and moving
Heather Cass White
Times Literary SupplementLydia Davis has, in recent years, become the most successful and prominent practitioner of flash and super-short fiction
[A] delicious collection of off-beat, drolly observant tales. Even the slenderest (and some are a few scant lines) contain whole worlds of suggestion and feeling, displaying an absorbing inquisitiveness into the natural world and human nature that’s irresistible
The wonder of Davis's work is her ability to reveal how close attention - that rarest of commodities in an attention-starved world - reveals the beauty, sorrow and strangeness of all our seemingly quotidian lives
Erica Wagner
Sunday TimesGraceful, funny, awkward, surprising, unlikely, persuasive and moving
Heather Cass White
Times Literary SupplementLydia Davis has, in recent years, become the most successful and prominent practitioner of flash and super-short fiction
[A] delicious collection of off-beat, drolly observant tales. Even the slenderest (and some are a few scant lines) contain whole worlds of suggestion and feeling, displaying an absorbing inquisitiveness into the natural world and human nature that’s irresistible
Davis’s ability to observe and celebrate minutiae is as wise and miraculous as ever
Graceful, funny, awkward, surprising, unlikely, persuasive and moving
Heather Cass White
Times Literary SupplementLydia Davis has, in recent years, become the most successful and prominent practitioner of flash and super-short fiction
[A] delicious collection of off-beat, drolly observant tales. Even the slenderest (and some are a few scant lines) contain whole worlds of suggestion and feeling, displaying an absorbing inquisitiveness into the natural world and human nature that’s irresistible
Lydia Davis
View profileLydia Davis is a short story writer, the author of one novel and of two volumes of non-fiction, Essays One (2019) and Essays Two (2021). She is also an award-winning translator from French and other languages. Her honours include a MacArthur Fellowship (2003), the Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2013), the Man Booker International Prize (2013) for her fiction and in 2020 the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. She has been decorated as both Chevalier and Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and translation. In 2023, Lydia Davis won Fiction Author of the Year in Bookshop.org’s Indie Champion Awards. She lives in upstate New York.
Lydia Davis
View profileLydia Davis is a short story writer, the author of one novel and of two volumes of non-fiction, Essays One (2019) and Essays Two (2021). She is also an award-winning translator from French and other languages. Her honours include a MacArthur Fellowship (2003), the Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2013), the Man Booker International Prize (2013) for her fiction and in 2020 the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. She has been decorated as both Chevalier and Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and translation. In 2023, Lydia Davis won Fiction Author of the Year in Bookshop.org’s Indie Champion Awards. She lives in upstate New York.
Lydia Davis
View profileLydia Davis is a short story writer, the author of one novel and of two volumes of non-fiction, Essays One (2019) and Essays Two (2021). She is also an award-winning translator from French and other languages. Her honours include a MacArthur Fellowship (2003), the Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2013), the Man Booker International Prize (2013) for her fiction and in 2020 the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. She has been decorated as both Chevalier and Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and translation. In 2023, Lydia Davis won Fiction Author of the Year in Bookshop.org’s Indie Champion Awards. She lives in upstate New York.
