'Remarkable. Some of the most moving fiction - on death, marriage, children - of recent years. To read The Collected Stories is to be reminded of the grand, echoing mind-chambers created by Sebald or recent Coetzee. A writer of vast intelligence and originality' Independent on Sunday

Find out why fellow authors like Ali Smith, Dave Eggers and Jonathan Franzen love Lydia Davis's writing so much in this landmark collection of all of her stories to date from across three decades. And why James Wood described this book in the New Yorker as 'a body of work probably unique in American writing' and 'one of the great, strange American literary contributions'.

» Read an extract from The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by downloading the Penguin Taster here

» Visit Penguin Tasters

Enlightened

I don’t know if I can remain friends with her. I’ve thought
and thought about it—she’ll never know how much. I gave
it one last try. I called her, after a year. But I didn’t like the
way the conversation went. The problem is that she is not
very enlightened. Or I should say, she is not enlightened
enough for me. She is nearly fifty years old and no more
enlightened, as far as I can see, than when I first knew her
twenty years ago, when we talked mainly about men. I did
not mind how unenlightened she was then, maybe because
I was not so enlightened myself. I believe I am more
enlightened now, and certainly more enlightened than she
is, although I know it’s not very enlightened to say that.
But I want to say it, so I am willing to postpone being
more enlightened myself so that I can still say a thing like
that about a friend.