Lydia Davis wins International Man Booker Prize

The American writer, best known for her short stories, was awarded the £60,000 prize last night

The Man Booker International Prize is given every two years to a living author for a body of work, either originally in English or widely available in English in translation.

Lydia Davis, who has published one novel (The End of the Story), is known for short stories and for her translations of French literature and philosophy. Can't and Won't, a new short story collection, will be published in the UK in 2014 by Hamish Hamilton.

The other nine writers shortlisted for the prize were: U R Aranthamurthy; Aharon Appelfeld; Intizar Husain; Yan Lianke; Marie NDiaye; Josip Novakovich; Marilynne Robinson; Vladimir Sorokin and Peter Stamm.

Chair of judges Professor Sir Christopher Ricks said: 'Lydia Davis’ writings fling their lithe arms wide to embrace many a kind. Just how to categorise them? Should we simply concur with the official title and dub them stories? Or perhaps miniatures? Anecdotes? Essays? Jokes? Parables? Fables? Texts? Aphorisms, or even apophthegms? Prayers, or perhaps wisdom literature? Or might we settle for observations?
'There is vigilance to her stories, and great imaginative attention. Vigilance as how to realise things down to the very word or syllable; vigilance as to everybody’s impure motives and illusions of feeling.'

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