Description

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.

Publisher Review

Praise for Lydia Davis: This is writer as mighty as Kafka, as subtle as Flaubert and as epoch-making, in her own way, as Proust . . . She's a joy -- ALI SMITH * * Guardian * * A writer of vast intelligence and originality * * Independent on Sunday * * Davis is brilliant . . . She captures words as a hunter might and uses punctuation like a trap Davis is a high priestess of the startling, telling detail . . . a most original and daring mind -- Colm Toibin * * Daily Telegraph * * The patron saint of befuddled reality . . . Inimitable * * New York Times * * An author who takes nothing for granted . . . her stories ask existential questions, about us and the world * * Los Angeles Times * * She is our Vermeer, patiently observing and chronicling daily life but from angles odd and askew * * New York Times * * Davis is a magician of self-consciousness. Few writers now working make the words on the page matter more -- JONATHAN FRANZEN An American virtuoso of the short story form * * Salon * * One of the quiet giants of American fiction * * Los Angeles Times Book Review * * A trailblazer in the world of short-form prose -- JAMES WOOD * * New Yorker * *